Pride and Prejudice
by OhNoTheyFoundMe
Summary: "To her surprise,he lifted his hand and ran a finger down her cheek. She flinched back involuntarily.His touch made her nervous. His face twisted with a mixture of amusement and another expression that she couldn't place." When Dumbledore punishes Draco and Draco asks for Hermione's help, they strike a deal together.But what will happen when business starts to mix with pleasure?
1. Chapter 1

Hermione was flicking through the pages of "A History of Magic" when she felt the unwelcome tingling at the back of her neck that warned her that someone was watching her. She raised her eyes, irritated, to find the source of the feeling and she was met by a pair of pale grey eyes.

"Are you actually going to say something Malfoy or are you just going to keep staring?" she snapped at him.

The library was her sanctuary and she loathed being disturbed.

He rose from where he was sitting and slowly made his way towards her.

"You're wasting my time Malfoy." she sighed and rubbed her eyes. The previous night had been tiring and her grueling timetable was starting to get to her.

"I do have something to say, Granger. But I'm not going to say it here." His slow drawl grated on her nerves and it took a few seconds before she realized that with she had been clenching her fists so hard that her chewed up nails had yet again broken her skin.

"What's wrong with here?" she demanded rudely. "Worried that someone will see the Slytherin Prince talking to a mudblood?"

"This is a library Granger." Malfoy gasped in mock shock. "I thought that surely you of all people would know that there's-"

"No talking in the library." Madame Pince finished the sentence with a stern look at the pair of them. "Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy, im going to have to ask you to leave."

"But...but..."

"You're disturbing everyone else Miss Granger." she snapped.

She had never been kicked out of the library before and felt the blood rush to her cheeks and her eyes start to water and she grabbed the rest of her books as fast she could. Crying in front of Malfoy was the last thing she wanted to do.

She stormed out of the library and rubbed at her eyes furiously.

"Whoa Granger wait up. I wanted to talk to you about something. Are- are you crying?" he asked incredulously. His characteristic smirk lit up his face.

"I'm not crying, I'm ANGRY. You got me kicked out of the library." she hissed at him.

"Whatever Granger. Look, I have a favour to ask of you." he ran his hand through his pale blonde hair, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation and the fact that he had to ask her for something.

"No."

She strode down the corridor as fast as she could.

"You haven't even heard it yet."

"Now you look; I don't care what you want from me, im not going to do it. You got me kicked out of the library and you've been a complete arse to me since the first year."

"Granger I'm desperate."

Something in his voice made her turn around.

"What do you want Malfoy?" The fight had gone out of her and now she just sounded tired.

"I need you to tutor me."

"You're joking." She said flatly.

"I'm late for class Granger. We'll sort this out later." He nodded at her before striding away.

It was evening when Hermione was sitting comfortably in her favourite chair by the fire in the Gryffindor common room. The shadows had lengthened outside and the forbidden forest looked dark and menacing from the high windows of the Gryffindor tower. She was correcting Ron's potions homework with little flicks of her wand.

"Ron...?" She put down his essay.

"What, done already?" He asked, astonished. "I figured it would take longer than that to correct. That means I did well then doesn't it?" Pride coloured his tone.

"The essay is fine Ron." She could hardly keep her eyes open, she was so tired. She yawned loudly.

"Has Malfoy been struggling in any of his classes recently do you think?" 

He shrugged.

"I hope so." he muttered darkly. "You should get some rest 'mione. I'm off to bed."

"Goodnight then. I'll just finish off here. I still have to draw up the prefect patrol timings."

She sighed as he left. She hated being the last one left in the common room. She must have dozed off because she was woken up by the tapping of an owl on the window. It dropped a note in her hand before shooting her a look she could have sworn was one of disdain before flying away.

Owlery. Now. -the note read.

"What?" she mumbled to herself sleepily. Her brain was too foggy to think so in her sleepy haze she pulled on her shoes, grabbed her wand and set off.

"Going somewhere?" the fat lady asked her as she stumbled through the portrait.

"I'm hungry." she mumbled back groggily.

"Students shouldn't be out of bed at night but-oh alright I wont tell anyone this time, since its you."

"Thanks." she smiled at the fat lady in response and made her way as quickly and quietly as possible to the owlery.


	2. Chapter 2-Murphy's Law

"What part of 'now' didn't you understand Granger?" Malfoy shot her a dirty look the second he saw her.

"It's 2 o clock in the morning Malfoy. Just consider yourself lucky that I came. What do you want?"

"I already told you, I need a tutor. And since you're the only one whose intelligence is at par with mine, you're the only one who can teach me."

"What subject?" she asked warily.

"Muggle studies."

"WHAT?" she shrieked and he clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her into the shadows.

"Don t wake up the entire castle." he hissed in her ear. His breath tickled her ear and she was acutely aware of the fact that though they weren't touching, she could feel the heat radiating from his body. She pulled his hand away from her mouth.

"Sorry. I thought you just said you needed help in muggle studies."

"I did Granger. Can we stop talking about it now?"

"Not unless you tell me why you're taking muggle studies in the first place."

"Dumbledore overheard me call someone a mudblood and decided it would be an apt punishment. I need to pass the class or he'll make me repeat a year. Just wait till my father hears about this." he spat.

"I'm not helping you. You can find someone who isn't a mudblood to help you. After all, we mudbloods are inferior to you in every way." she mocked him before turning to leave.

"I'm not going to apologize for calling you mudblood, it's what you are and one day you'll come to terms with that. But im willing to do any one thing you ask for in return for your help."

Hermione turned around.

"Ok but if you call me a mudblood again, this agreement ends. And no more late night meetings because I need my sleep."

"Yeah yeah."

"When and where do we meet?"

"In the East Wing corridor near the portrait of Renee the Ugly after classes tomorrow."

He walked away without thanking her.

The next day was hell for Hermione. It all started in the Great Hall during breakfast when she fell asleep into her bowl of porridge

"Are you alright Hermione?" Harry asked. "You look like hell. You're not getting enough sleep are you? Just ask Ron to help you with your house duties. He's a Prefect too, you don't have to do everything alone you know."

He wiped some porridge off her cheek and she smiled at him.

"Don t worry about it, I'm fine. Speaking of which, I have some work to do after classes today so I wont be in the common room."

"Work?" he raised an eyebrow, or at least, tried to.

"Just SPEW things" she lied quickly. She turned to see whether Malfoy looked as sleepy as she felt and to her irritation, she saw that he looked like he had slept well and looked normal. Harry followed her gaze.

"Ok then."he shot her a peculiar look and they made their way to classes together.

Hermione passed the day in a haze. In charms class she couldn't perform a simple polishing spell and Professor Flitwick pulled her over to the side after class to ask her if everything was alright.

"Yes of course. Just a headache I'll be back to my peak performance by tomorrow."

She forced a smile onto her face, but her head really was pounding and frankly,she was getting tired of people asking her if she was ok, even though she knew that they meant well.

To make matters worse, the next class they had was potions with the Slytherins.

She cut her finger with her knife while slicing some Zostera stems and the quick healing charm she did still oozed blood from time to time.

To make matters worse, her potion. Which was supposed to be a pale lilac colour was slowly but steadily turning into a bright bubble gum pink coloured gloopy mess.

"I have no clue what I'm doing wrong." she said, flustered as she tried to fix it before Professor Slughorn could reach her table.

"This is the perfect shade of lilac that your potion should be by now." Slughorn praised Malfoy as he passed his table. " 10 points to Slytherin."

Hermione worked even faster now, trying to fix her potion before-

" Tsk tsk Miss Granger. What do we have here? Why is your potion this colour?"

"I don't know sir." she hung her head in shame.

"How disappointing." he shook his head before spotting her bleeding finger.

"That," he said, pointing at her finger, "Is the reason that your potion is this colour. Very careless Miss Granger. Don t you know that blood is a very potent ingredient and its addition to a potion can change the properties of the potion altogether? 20 points from Gryffindor for making such a careless and dangerous mistake. I didn't expect this from you at all."

He gave her a disappointed head shake as he walked away and she hung her head in shame.

Harry patted her on the back consolingly.

"Don t worry about it Hermione, it happens to the best of us." Ron muttered to her.

"I'm just having a bad day. That's all." Hermione put on her best indifferent face. Harry and Ron knew how scared she was of failing, they had seen her reaction after a boggart had told her she had failed in the third year.

She tried to lay low for the rest of the day, barely raising her hand to answer any questions at all. By the time evening came, she was exhausted.

"I can't wait for the weekend, I'm so tired these days. I think two days of proper sleep should fix it though."

"You could take a nap now though," Ron suggested.

"I'd love to but I can't. I have work to do."

"Work? Classes just ended. What work?"

She shook her head quickly. "Just SPEW things."

"Is Hermione acting fishy to you?" Ron asked Harry as soon as she left.

"I think its the sleep deprivation that's gotten to her. Speaking of which, you should really help her with the prefect duties and drawing up timetables."

Ron shrugged. "I did offer, she was the one who asked me to stay out of it.. She says she enjoys doing it and it'll be done faster if she does it alone. She's always been stubborn that way."

They watched her bustle through the Fat Lady's portrait.


	3. Chapter 3- Fight and Flight

Hermione rushed to the portrait of Renee the Ugly, reluctant to be called out on her tardiness by Malfoy again. To her slight annoyance, Malfoy was already waiting for her there. She had been harbouring a secret desire to call _him_ out for being late this time around.

'At least you're on time this time." he sneered at her.

"Where are we going to study?" she got straight to the point. She didn't want to spend any more time with him than required.

He sneered at her again and she fought the urge to hit him as hard as she had in the third year. Logically, she knew her mood was only that bad because she had been sleepless for the last couple of weeks, but that didn't stop her from having the violent thoughts she was currently having.

"Just follow me." he ordered and walked away, clearly expecting her to follow him like some sort of devoted puppy. She debated not going after him at all but in the end decided that the more she argued, the more time she'd have to spend with him.

He was clearly familiar with the corridors in that part of the wing because he took them along the more deserted ones and the only people they met were a pair of Ravenclaws who were taking advantage of the deserted areas and making out.

She had to cover her mouth then to stop herself from laughing. It looked like they were trying to eat each other's faces.

She recognized where they stopped.

"The room of Requirement." she breathed, trying to hide the fact that she was impressed that he had thought of the perfect area for their tutoring sessions.

Malfoy strode in.

"I would say 'ladies first'" he called back to her, " but we both know that you aren't one."

He managed to dodge the quill that she threw at him.

The room had outdone itself, as usual. There were shelves and shelves of books and a reading area in the corner with bean bags. Tables full of muggle instruments that she recognized from her parent's house were lined along one side of the room. In the middle of the room there was a table with two chairs.

Hermione beamed around the room. Malfoy however, looked thoroughly unimpressed.

"What a load of junk." he said aloud.

"You're a load of junk." Hermione muttered to herself.

She dumped her book bag on the table and pulled up a seat.

"Sit down Malfoy. Don't waste my time."

He sat down,shooting her a dirty look and proceeded to pull out a long sheet of parchment from his bag.

"What's this? Your homework? I just want to make it clear right now that I'm not going to do your homework for you-"

"I don't want you to do my homework Granger, you score less than me anyway." he smirked at her.

She felt her cheeks turning red with the outrageousness of that statement.

"I hardly ever score less than you. I score more than you in everything but defence in the dark arts and we both know that that's because you have inside knowledge of the dark arts."

" And what exactly are you trying to imply?" he leaned in closer to her. His voice was low and dangerous.

Hermione didn't move back.

"I don't know Malfoy, I'm afraid you'll go and whine to your father if I say anything. Daddy's little baby aren't you?"

Before she even knew it, they had risen from the chairs and were pointing their wands at each other. Malfoy's face was cold and expressionless. The parchment that Malfoy had pulled out of his bag lay forgotten on the table.

"Say that again and I'll-"

"Go on then. I dare you." she raised her chin defiantly. Neither of them lowered their wands.

The room was still and silent for a few beats. Neither of them moved.

Hermione was the first one to lower her wand.

"I'm sorry, I started that." she muttered.

"What?"

"I'm not repeating myself. What's on the parchment?"She took her seat again, but he remained standing.

"It's our agreement." his voice was cold and his face was neutral. "I thought we should go over it today before we start anything."

"Of course."

"First, the ground rules."

"Number One: You don't call me mudblood. Or I'm out."

He shot her a derisive look. "Fine."

"Number Two: I won't do your homework."

The look he shot her then was scathing. "We've been over this already. Don't waste my time."

"Number Three..." she paused for a moment to think.

"No one finds out about this." He said.

"You're right. I don't want anyone to know I've been spending time with a bully anyway."

He didn't say anything in reply to that.

"Number Four... you don't try anything with me." A slight blush tinged her cheeks.

Malfoy snorted at that.

"Try anything with you? With _you_? Why would I even want to? You overestimate your appeal. I don't think _anyone_ wants to try anything with you. Must be your Gryffindor pride showing."

Hermione kept her face neutral so that he wouldn't see how his jab had hurt her. _I am more than my looks_ she chanted to herself in her head.

"I've heard you sleep with anything in a skirt Malfoy. You can't blame me for not wanting to catch any of your diseases."

"Last time I checked, I only slept with humans. Not things like you."

"Ooh, dehumanisation. Classy aren't you? Now I understand why all the girls swoon over you." she shot back.

"You're wasting my time again Granger." he tapped his long pale fingers on the table but added it to the list anyway.

"You're right, I want this over with as much as you do."

"So in return for tutoring, what's the one favor that you want from me?"

Hermione had thought hard about this. She could ask him for so many things, the possibilities were endless. She could make him stop calling anyone else a "mudblood" again. Or she could make him join SPEW. The list could go on.

"You have to release any house elves you have at your mansion from their service. I've heard about how your father abused Dobby."

A look of shock passed over Malfoy's face. He had clearly not been expecting that request.

"That's it? Ok done."

He passed her the parchment and she signed it beneath his signature.

"Now that that's sorted, did you take any notes in your classes today? What topic have you started?"

"Obviously I took notes. And our topic was "Muggle Medicine."

"And the essay topic you have to write for homework?"

"Twelve inches on my opinion on whether muggle medicine is more advanced than magical medicine."

"When is it due?"

"Monday."

"Do you have any ideas for what you should write?" her tone was businesslike.

"Obviously magical medicine is more advanced."

"Reasoning?"

He shrugged.

"Of course you don't have any reasoning." her tone was pitiful. "You don't really know enough about muggle medicine to judge it. Or muggles."

He shot her a look that warned her that they were close to another fight.

"Ok so here's what we'll do. Today we'll go over the notes you took and the lesson you had today and we can look up a bit about muggle medicine from different books. You can research a little for the essay yourself, the room of requirement has provided more than enough books and tomorrow we can have a debate about the topic. You should be able to manage the essay by yourself after that."

"Whatever." he shrugged carelessly.

They went over the notes he had taken and the lesson together. Hermione was surprised to see that his notes were neat and well put together.

She pulled out her own potions homework and the book she had borrowed from the library and started making points for her essay while he looked up his own topics from other books.

"What happened in potions today?" Malfoy asked without looking up from his book.

"Nothing. Made a stupid mistake." she was reluctant to talk about it and her tone signaled the end of the conversation. Unfortunately, he wouldn't let it go.

"Does it have anything to do with how tired you look?"

'Well someone made me wake up and go for a midnight stroll with him so yes, maybe it does. I wish people would stop saying I look tired." 

He shrugged.

"You look like shit, and uglier than usual."

"Jeez thanks." she shoved her essay back into her bag and stood up.

"You're right, I am tired. We're done for today. Be prepared for tomorrow,"

As soon as she was back in the Gryffindor common room, she went to her bed and fell asleep. She really was tired of being tired.

 _I still have to practice my polishing charms_ was the last thought that she had before she fell into a dreamless sleep.


	4. Chapter 4-Non-Verbal

Hermione woke up because she was being shaken roughly. She opened her eyes to see a head full of ginger hair.

"Ron?" she asked groggily.

Ginny grinned back at her. "Wrong Weasley. Its lunch time, you should probably get up now. Ron said to let you sleep in because you've been pretty out of it lately."

"LUNCH TIME?" Hermione shrieked, jumping up from her bed. "That means I've missed Defense against the Dark Arts, A Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology. I'll get detention for sure. Not to mention the notes I haven't taken."

Ginny fought to keep the smile off her face. "You worry about it too much. Just borrow someone else's notes."

"Ginny, no one else takes notes as well as I do." Hermione despaired. "Except Malfoy. And I'm not asking him."

Ginny threw her a slightly suspicious look. "When did you see Malfoy's notes? Do you talk to him?"

"If by talking you mean trading insults and him calling me a mudblood, then yes, we talk. As for the notes, he's only slightly behind me in most classes. You don't get marks like that without taking good notes."

 _Please don't call my bluff_ Hermione prayed in her head.

Ginny, to her relief, looked satisfied with her explanation and didn't press any further.

"In any case, you better hurry. Lunch is almost over."

Hermione had already started yanking her uniform on. She ran a comb through her hair and made a snap decision to skip lunch and instead practice her polishing charms. She ran to the first empty classroom she found and started working on her charms. She ignored her grumbling stomach and made a mental note to get a snack from the kitchen as soon as she could.

She managed to master the charm within 20 minutes and spent the rest of lunch drawing up a time table to help her finish all her homework on time. It was rare that she allowed herself to fall behind schedule.

She ran to the potions classroom just as lunch ended but Professor Slughorn was late and the Gryffindors and Slytherins milled outside the classroom.

"Hey." she greeted Harry and Ron with a wide smile. "Thanks for letting me sleep in today, I really needed that."

They grinned back at her.

"We thought you'd be angry." Harry said.

"I missed three classes but I'll make up for them later. Harry can I borrow your notes?"

"What's wrong with my notes?" Ron asked, looking petulant.

"Since when do you even take notes Ron?" she asked him and they burst into laughter together. She felt fresher than she had in days.

She felt that tingling sensation on the back of her neck again and turned around to see Malfoy watching her. He averted his eyes the second hers met his with his typical disdainful expression, but not before Ron saw him looking at them.

"What are you looking at?" he demanded rudely.

"I was looking at your face and was wondering how any one could produce something as ugly as you. I guess it runs in the family though." Malfoy drawled.

Beside him, Pansy Parkinson burst into peals of laughter.

"Draco you're soooo funny." she pressed herself against him.

"Draco you're soooo funny. I love you so much Draco. Marry me please. Let me have your babies." Hermione imitated Pansy's high pitched squeals. Harry, who had been about to defend Ron, looked surprised at Hermione's outburst.

It was extremely atypical of her to make such petty retorts. When she did insult someone(mostly in defense of her friends), they were usually well thought out jabs.

Hermione on the other hand, had been in an excellent mood before encountering the Slytherins. She was beyond annoyed that Malfoy and his posse had the power to ruin her mood with just a few words. She was even more annoyed by the fact that Malfoy wouldn't even look at her in public although she was doing him a favour by spending her own valuable time tutoring him.

"Shut up, you filthy mudblood. At least I have a boyfriend. No boy would even look at _you_. Mudblood, and on top of that ugly." Pansy retorted.

"Looks aren't everything,Parkinson. I wonder if your dear Malfoy will like you when you have wrinkles. Doesn't look like he likes you much right now either, judging by the disgusted look on his face."

Ron snorted beside her, trying to suppress his laughter and Pansy drew her wand and pointed it at her.

In response Harry, Ron and Hermione drew their wands and leveled them at the Slytherins. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Blaise Zabini pointed their wands at the Gryffindors.

"Scared, Potter?" Malfoy's cold grey eyes glinted in the light and Hermione had a faint recollection of Malfoy saying the exact same thing when he and Harry had been about to duel in the second year. She wondered absent mindedly if Harry caught the reference.

" _Anteoculatia!"_ Blaise cried, aiming at Harry.

He blocked the hex quickly while Ron fired a hex back at him.

Hermione had known from before that they would be practising nonverbal spells that year and had been practicing one particular nonverbal spell for hours whenever she had the time. She took the opportunity to use it.

 _Expelliarmus_ she said in her head and Pansy's, Blaise's,Crabbe's and Draco's wands flew neatly into her hand. There was silence for a second.

And then Crabbe punched Harry in the face. Ron joined into the brawl while Hermione dropped all the wands and tried to pull them off each other while Zabini joined into the fight. She was hindered by Pansy who was still out for vengeance and yanked roughly at Hermione's hair and tried to claw at her face.

Hermione responded by elbowing Pansy in the stomach and trying to pry her fingers out from her hair.

"ENOUGH." Slughorn bellowed. He was standing in the doorway, looking flustered. He had been watching the duel with interest until it had gotten out of hand.

"How dare you!" he cried. "50 points from each of you." His face was red in anger. "But only 20 points from Mr Malfoy."

They all turned to stare at Malfoy. He hadn't joined into the brawl and had picked up his wand from where Hermione had dropped them and had been watching them with amusement etched into his face.

Slughorn turned to Hermione. "20 points to Gryffindor for that beautiful non verbal spell. I was very impressed with that. And DETENTION FOR THE LOT OF YOU." Slughorn looked breathless, although his face had lost the tomato red hue that it had previously acquired.

The group received dirty looks from the surrounding Gryffindors and Slytherins for costing them so many house points.

The rest of the lesson passed in relative silence.

At the end of the lesson Slughorn told them to stay back while the rest of the students trooped out.

"You'll have detention at 6pm on Saturday. We'll meet in the great hall. Don't be late."

He dismissed them.

Hermione was not looking forward to that day's tutoring session.

The Slytherins headed to their Defense Against the Dark Arts class with the Ravenclaws while Hermione headed to her numerology lesson and Harry and Ron went to their divination class together.

"How did she do that?" Blaise muttered to Draco as they hurried down the hallway.

Draco shrugged in return.

"I don't know. We're supposed to be learning non-verbal spells this year. She's probably been practicing since the day classes began."

"You're impressed aren't you Draco?" Blaise asked him.

"You'd be a fool not to be." Draco smiled back at Blaise.

His friendship with Blaise was a peculiar one. They were close, but there was an insurpassable wall between them. There always would be. The Slytherins were a cautious lot. They would stand up for their friends and their beliefs but their own agendas were _always_ the priority. They had to be extremely careful who they could trust.

Draco would never admit it out loud, or even to himself, but he envied Ron's, Harry's and Hermione's friendship. He had seen how implicitly they trusted each other. How they always had each other's backs.

He sneered to himself to cover his jealousy. _Good. One day that trust will get them killed._

"Professor I need to ask you something." Draco asked Snape as their lesson ended.

"Hmm?" Snape didn't look up at him but continued to shuffle through his notes.

"How long would it take someone to master the non-verbal Expelliarmus spell? And how long would it take one to master it's non-verbal counter spell?"

"Expelliarmus? You haven't even started with the easy non-verbal spells. Lower your expectations."

He waved his hand at Draco, clearly dismissing him.

"But how would someone go about it if they were determined?"

Professor Snape peered at Draco for a few seconds before drawing out a piece of parchment from his desk and scrawling a name onto it.

"Go to Madame Pince and ask her to give you this book from the restricted section of the library. This should have what you need."

"Thank you Sir." he turned to leave.

"Draco." Snape called after him, and he turned around.

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"I hope so too."


	5. Chapter 5- Forced Conversation

The first thing Draco did was head to the library for the book. He didn't care if he was late for A Care of Magical Creatures anyway. In his opinion, Hagrid couldn't teach so he wasn't really missing much by skipping a class. He was sure his father could get him out of detention.

He issued the book, ignoring the suspicious look that Madame Pince gave him.

He flicked through it as he walked and frowned. The non verbal spells given in the book weren't the basics that they were supposed to start with.

He headed to the room of requirement. The Room had provided him with straw-stuffed dummies for practising offensive spells.

 _Perfect._

He flicked through the contents and decided that the first spell he would learn would be expelliarmus. Next time in a duel, he'd disarm Hermione before she disarmed him.

After an hour of practicing, all he had managed to do was make the wand of the dummy he was trying to disarm, twitch.

He had just thrown himself down onto a beanbag when Hermione walked into the room, tugging her usual bagful of books behind her.

She stared at him for a second, hesistating, like she wanted to say something.

"Spit in out Granger."

"Why are you sweating?" she narrowed her eyes at him.

He debated mentally whether to answer that.

"I had A Care Of Magical Creatures."

"...its cold outside."

"We were studying salamanders."

"We did that last year..."

"Why are you so nosy Granger? Did Potter send you to check up on my criminal activities and report back to him?" His tone was full of sarcasm.

She didn't reply to that but pulled up a chair at the table they had been sitting at the previous day.

"Hurry up."

"I'm not going to study today." Draco stated.

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to."

Hermione, to his surprise, didn't protest, but grabbed her bag and headed to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving."

"No you're not. Sit down."

"Why? This isn't part of our agreement. You study, I tutor. That was our agreement. Not you refuse to study, I stay and waste my time."

"Actually it is part of our agreement. It was in the postscript. You signed to it. The Room Of Requirement won't let you out until I say this tutoring session is over."

She tried the door. It was locked.

"Unbelievable. Only you would add something to the agreement when I wasn't looking. I demand to be let out." She fought to keep her voice steady and under control.

"No." Draco closed his eyes and went back to relaxing.

"I have things to do." she tried not to panic.

He didn't respond.

She fought to keep her calm and headed back to the table. She pulled out her things and started working on her Charms essay in silence.

After a while, she felt him get up from the beanbag and head towards her. She didn't turn, but her muscles tensed up and she stopped writing.

 _Is he going to kill me? Or hit me in revenge for the third year? This entire this was a stupid idea. You're smarter than this. Why would you agree to be in a closed space with only the two of you when he's a possible death eater?_

She didn't want to admit it to herself but she was a little scared.

She felt him looking over her shoulder at what she was writing. Neither of them moved or broke the silence.

"I'm not scared of you Malfoy." she said defiantly, clenching her fingers around her quill.

"No one said you were, Granger." he sounded like he was stifling a laugh.

"Are you going to let me leave now?"

"Nope."

"Then I have nothing to say to you." she did her best to ignore him.

"Tell me something," He waited for her to respond, but continued when she didn't. "Have I ever hit you?"

The question caught her by surprise. "Hit me?"

"Did I stutter?Yes, hit me. Like I recall you did to me in the third year." he drawled.

"No...why? Are you going to?" she tensed further, prepared to defend herself.

He almost smiled, before an annoyed expression took over his face.

"You're a liar, Granger." he scowled at her. "I didn't take you for one."

"Excuse me?"

"You said you weren't scared of me. But your body language begs to differ. Every single muscle of yours is tense."

"That's because I'm stressed."

"Liar." he smirked. "I've never hit you, why are you scared?" his tone was mocking.

"Doesn't take long for a verbal bully to turn into a physical one..."

He studied her with an inscrutable expression on his face and she stared back challenging him to argue with her.

"I think you should go." he said quietly.

"About time." she muttered back.

This time when she tried to open the door, it swung open easily.

 **Sorry guys, major writer's block. Meh :(**


	6. Chapter 6- Raining Glass

It would be an understatement to say that the detention on Saturday was "unpleasant". The Gryffindors showed up promptly at 6pm in the Great Hall, mostly due to Hermione's insistence that they would lose even more house points if they showed up late. The Slytherins loitered in shortly afterwards. Draco wore the carefully tousled look that he usually did and Hermione snorted, wondering how long it had taken him to put that look together.

Hermione carefully avoided meeting Draco's eyes and turned around so she faced away from him. Things between them had been awkward for the last few days, although Hermione pretended she was indifferent to it. In truth, Hermione was annoyed.

He hadn't turned up for their tutoring sessions for a few days, and Hermione had waited half an hour for him in the Room of Requirement before giving up and going to the library.

She had caught him in the library on Thursday, kissing Pansy Parkinson against one of the shelves and had debated whether to interrupt him and demand to know where he had been and why he was wasting her time, but instead, she had turned and walked away, leaving him to be shouted at by Madame Pince instead.

The group waited a few more minutes for Slughorn to show up.

"What's the point in telling us to come on time if he can't come on time himself?" Ron muttered beneath his breath.

"I'm sure he has his reasons." Hermione muttered back.

"He's a bloody git, that's his reason."

Harry coughed hard, trying to cover up his laughter and even Hermione, who disapproved of disrespecting teachers, tried hard not to smile.

"Now then," Slughorn began, "today I'll be splitting you up into groups, each one consisting of a Slytherin and a Gryffindor. Maybe this will teach you something about teamwork, or at least, the importance of not dueling where you're likely to be caught." Slughorn chuckled at his own joke while the rest of them stared at him in stony silence.

"Mr Potter, you'll be with Crabbe and you'll be helping Filch with some filing."

"Miss Granger you'll be with..."

 _Don't pair me with Malfoy. Not with Malfoy. Not with Malfoy. Not with Malfoy._

"...Miss Parkinson and you'll be helping me with sorting the potions ingredients."

"Oh wonderful, I'll be stuck with the mudblood." Pansy spat, loud enough for Hermione to hear.

"Mr Weasley, you'll be working with Mr Malfoy and you'll both be polishing some armour under Filch's supervision and Zabini you'll be helping Professor Hagrid with cleaning out the Salamander nests."

"You're kidding me." Ron exclaimed loudly. "I can't work with _him._ I'll be thrown in Azkaban for committing murder by the end of today."

"My father shall hear about this."Malfoy said, just as loudly.

"Ten points each from Gryffindor and Slytherin." Slughorn said pleasantly, looking at the group. "Does anyone else have anything to add?"

He clapped his hands genially when no one replied. "Excellent. Miss Granger and Miss Parkinson, if you'd follow me. The rest of you go to your respective Professors. Oh, and before I forget, there'll be no usage of magic involved, today is all about teamwork."

Pansy turned and gave Draco a kiss before trailing reluctantly after Professor Slughorn. Hermione caught the look on Draco's face as he turned to leave, he looked... indifferent. As much as she detested Pansy, she couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for her. Draco was, in her opinion, clearly using Pansy as a source of entertainment or for something else along those lines.

Pansy threw Hermione dirty looks as they walked together, although she seemed careful enough not to touch Hermione.

 _Probably thinks her hands will get dirty if she touches a mudblood._

She shook her head at the thought.

Slughorn lead them to the ingredients storeroom. She vaguely remembered stealing boomslang skin from this storeroom for brewing some counterfeit polyjuice potion a few years ago.

The shelves were stacked with dusty glass jars, each was filled with a different ingredient used in potion making. She spotted a jar of toad eyes, a jar of dried rabbit's feet and a bundle of unicorn hairs, amongst other things. Some of the jars were filled with murky liquid in which... things were suspended.

Hermione couldn't help but shiver when she thought she saw one of the things in the jars move.

"You'll be dusting off the jars, rewriting the tags in fresh ink and then rearranging the jars in alphabetical order." Slughorn instructed them. "Don't try and steal anything, there's an antitheft alarm on the room and _don't use magic._ Some of these ingredients are very sensitive to certain types of spells and may...react in unpleasant ways." he finished ominously.

A moment later, he was back to his usual genial self. "Well, have fun. Oh, and try and work together."

The second he left, Hermione took charge of the situation like she was used to doing.

"You start from that side of the room, I'll start from this side. It'll be faster if you leave the alphabetical order arrangement to me, it'll be faster that way." she said bossily.

"Whatever, skank." Pansy muttered back, although she followed Hermione's instructions.

Hermione pretended not to hear Pansy's comment. She just wanted to complete the task as fast as possible.

 _Should I warn her that Malfoy is probably using her?_ She debated to herself as she worked.

 _On one hand, she'll probably be offended and won't listen to me...but on the other hand, I would like someone to tell me if I were in the same situation and girls are supposed to look out for other girls..._

"Parkinson," she began cautiously. "I know we aren't friends-"

"Oh really? What gave you that idea?" Pansy replied sarcastically.

"But I was wondering if it had occurred to you that there's a slight possibility that Malfoy is using you?" her voice faltered out at the end, unsure of how Pansy would respond.

"What?" Pansy asked flatly.

"It was just a thought."

"Ok. Let's sort a few things out." Pansy's normally pretty face was contorted with anger. "Who do you even think you are to judge mine and Draco's relationship? The entire castle knows how pathetic you are about Weasley and how he won't sleep with you even though you pine over him. Personally, I think you make a great pairing. A blood traitor and a _mudblood_."

She spat the word out, like it was the worst word she could think of, which it probably was.

"But don't you _dare_ try to undermine my relationship with Draco, just because you aren't pretty enough to get your own boyfriend. You go after other people's boyfriends, just because you don't have your own. You stupid h-"

"Ok, forget I said anything." Hermione said pleasantly, turning her back to Pansy and facing the shelves in order to hide the conflicting emotions flitting across her face.

 _The whole castle thinks I'm pining after Ron?_ The thought repeated itself in her mind, making it hard for her to concentrate. Pansy's words had gotten to her, loathe as she was to admit it, even to herself.

Pansy must have had trouble concentrating after their confrontation too because the next thing Hermione knew, she was being pulled out of her thoughts by Pansy's shriek of pain and horror.

She whipped around to see that Pansy had dropped one of the glass jars and it had shattered across the floor. The murky liquid in which the ingredient had been suspended had splattered across Pansy's foot and it was turning red rapidly, like a rash.

The ingredient in question seemed to be a severed tentacle or a worm of some sort that was slowly inching itself across the floor and was causing Pansy to shriek in horror.

"Its alive." she screeched. "And crap, I broke the jar and let it escape. Slughorn will be furious. This is your fault." she shouted at Hermione.

Hermione was used to being in tight situations in which she had to think fast after spending so many years with Harry and Ron and quickly assessed the damage and what she could do to fix it.

"First, I'll catch the worm, it looked like a Snorting Bullworm anyway so it shouldn't be too poisonous unless it stings me-"

She looked up to see Pansy pointing her wand at the shattered jar.

"NO WAIT DON'T-" Hermione shouted but at the same time Pansy said " _Reparo_ ".

The pieces of the jar glued themselves back together perfectly.

"What is your PROBLEM?" Pansy shouted at Hermione. Just then the jars on the very top shelves, which were the jars that had been stored for the longest amount of time exploded in unison, showering the preserving liquid, ingredients and glass over the pair of girls.

The two girls ducked, shielding their faces with their arms as the liquid rained down on them. A burning sensation spread along Hermione's arms wherever the liquid made contact with her skin.

"What the hell?" Pansy wailed.

"I told you not to cast a spell." Hermione said through gritted teeth, trying to control the pain spreading along her arms and her face. "Slughorn said the ingredients were sensitive to magic."

"The ingredients." Pansy cursed looking at the floor where the ingredients were strewn. Some of them were moving or twitching. "We're going to be in so much trouble and mY SKIN IS BURNING."her voice trailed into a half-hysterical screech.

"Shut up, shut up. I'm suffering as much as you are." Her eyes were welling with tears from the pain. "Just let me think."

"Do you know how to conjure jars?" she asked Pansy,barely able to control her voice. Her vision went dark for a second. Pansy seemed to be having some problems too, she was swaying on her feet but nodded in response to Hermione's question.

"Go out of the room and conjure some jars, I'll collect the ingredients because I can recognize most of these and know which ones are poisonous or not. Slughorn must have heard the noise, he'll be here soon." Hermione instructed her.

Her knees wobbled and she clutched a shelf for stability.

She crouched, trying to avoid touching the glass and started picking up the ingredients from the floor. When Pansy returned with the jars she stuffed the ingredients into the jars and sealed them as fast as she could.

She told Pansy which non poisonous ingredients to collect and they worked as fast as they could.

Hermione's vision went black again and she put her hand on the ground for support but cried out in pain when the shards of glass that were shattered all over the floor penetrated her skin.

She felt a dull throb of pain as her head hit the floor as she passed out.

She passed in and out of consciousness as she caught snippets of conversation. She felt light, like she was floating.

"What,you can't carry her? You actually have to cast wingardium leviosa on her?" It was Draco's voice, mocking yet annoyed at the same time.

She felt a sharp pain again as her head hit something hard and blacked out again for a few seconds.

"Are you _completely stupid_ Weasley? Did you seriously just _bang her head into a door?_ I knew Filch should have sent Potter instead. At least he isn't completely brain dead."

She didn't hear Ron's reply.

"Here, just carry Pansy, she's lighter. I'll carry Granger. Can't believe I have to touch a -" Draco stopped short of calling her a mudblood.

She felt herself being carried, pressed against Draco's chest and the feeling of lightness was gone.

The glass shards embedded in her skin were pressed deeper and Hermione, in her half conscious state felt nauseous from the pain.

Before she could stop herself, she vomited, all over Draco's shirt.

" _Un-bloody-believable."_ She heard him say before she passed out again.

 **Okay, I've got to admit, I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. I'll update as soon as I can :)**


	7. Chapter 7- Friendly Fire

When Hermione woke up, the first thing she saw was Draco kissing Pansy a few beds away. She grimaced, it wasn't the sight she had hoped to wake up to.

"Where are Ron and Harry?" she asked out loud, to nobody in particular.

When neither of them replied, she cleared her throat.

"Snorting Bullworm bites can cause the infection known as Bull fever which is highly contagious and leads to rashes which ooze pus all along your back and groin." she said loudly.

That did the trick, the two of them sprung apart.

"Where are Ron and Harry?" she asked again.

"They got called back to help clear up your mess." Draco said, a tad too smugly for Hermione's liking.

"And you're still here because...?"

"Because Pansy needs my support." he said, even more smugly than he had before. They went back to kissing.

Hermione did her best to ignore the slurping noises coming from that part of the the room. Madame Pomphrey was nowhere to be seen.

"Well...I'll just be going then..." she said to no one in particular before getting up and scurrying from the room as fast as possible.

She felt fine mostly. Just a vague feeling of nausea.

Someone grabbed her arm and she whipped around to see that it was Malfoy.

"I lied. Pomphrey left me so that I make sure that neither of you leave while she's gone."

"Get off." she struggled. "I feel si-" she vomited all over his shoes.

"...Now you're just doing this on purpose."

"Sorry." she said meekly and went back to bed.

She met Harry and Ron in the Great Hall the next morning for breakfast after Pomphrey finally let her go.

"I vomited on Malfoy...twice." she told then in hushed tones as they tried not to laugh.

"It's not funny he'll eat me alive for this."

"Actually, he won't go near you because he'll be too terrified you'll do it again." Ron put his head down on the table and his shoulders shook with laughter.

"Professor Slughorn told me to remind you that the Slug Club meeting is still on for tonight and he'd really like you to come if you feel up to it."

Hermione groaned, "Sure.I'll be there. Want to be my date Ron? It'd be less boring if you went with me." she said as casually as possible.

"Nah, I have plans with Lavender."

"Lavender?"

"Yep, she asked if we could hang out tonight. She's been more friendly to me since I made the Quidditch team anyway."

Hermione didn't reply and tried to hide the disappointment on her face by stuffing her mouth with toast.

"I have research to do anyway, I'll see you guys later."

"Hermione its Sunday!" they yelled after her as she disappeared through the arched doors of the Great Hall.

She made her way to the Room Of Requirement. She usually practised her spells in an abandoned classroom, but this time, she didn't want to be found.

She pushed open the door, only to see that the room was already occupied.

"If you're here to vomit on me again Granger, I'll hex you till you can't walk."

"I already apologized for that." she said, rolling her eyes. "Let go of the past."

"You weren't the one being vomited on." he muttered back. "We don't have a tutoring class today, are you stalking me?"

"Do you want to practise dueling by any chance, Malfoy?" she asked him, ignoring his last comment . "I need a partner to practise with."

"Potter too busy for you then?"

"He has his own life and I have mine."

"And the Weasel?"

" _Ron,"_ she emphasized his name, "has plans with Lavender." she couldn't help the tone of jealousy that crept into her voice.

Draco snorted but didn't reply.

All of a sudden Hermione's wand flew into Draco's hand as he cast the non-verbal Expelliarmus spell he had been practising for the last few days.

"If this was a real duel you'd have lost." Malfoy sneered at her.

"You stole my trick."

Draco shrugged and threw her wand back to her.

"I'll take it you want to duel then." Hermione said, suddenly changing her position without warning and firing a bat bogey hex at Malfoy. She dropped her bag of books onto the floor and shot him a challenging look.

He deflected it easily and the first real smile of his that Hermione had seen crept its way onto his face. His lips twitched, like he was fighting the smile.

"Lame, Granger. I expected better."

Hermione tried to disarm him, but to her surprise, he managed to deflect it easily.

"How did you even see that coming?" she asked, astonished.

"Your feet change position before you cast it. I saw it that day when you disarmed us all."

He shot back a binding hex at her, trying to catch her off guard but she deflected it easily with a flick of her wand.

"Try harder, Malfoy." she grinned at him, temporarily forgetting the enmity they usually shared.

This time he shot a bolt of blue light at her, a non-verbal spell she was unfamiliar with and didn't know the counter spell to. She jumped onto a chair to avoid being hit by the spell.

To her astonishment, Draco laughed. She had never heard him laugh before, it was a low, throaty sound.

"Feisty, Granger."

"You won't be saying that when I win." she shot back.

The harder they dueled, the more Draco laughed and the more determined each of them became not to let the other win. At one point of time, Draco flipped over a table and crouched behind it, shielding himself from the hex Hermione had fired at him.

Hermione, who was trying to avoid the hexes Draco sent her way from behind the table was running around the room wildly, blocking and dodging his spells. She was distracted for a split second as Draco made a chair implode and his spell hit her.

She crashed into the wall behind her, dropping her wand. Her wrists were bound by magic to the wall but her legs remained free to move. Draco strolled towards her and picked up her wand. He stood close enough to her that she could feel his breath on her nose.

"I guess that this means I wo-"he taunted her.

She swung her leg out, kicking him hard in the shin. He dropped both their wands as he fell to the ground clutching at his shin and her restraints disappeared the second he dropped his wand. She ducked and snatched up the wands.

"What the hell?" he asked and looked up to see Hermione grinning and pointing her wand at his face.

She snorted in amusement. "That's what happens when you get cocky, Malfoy."

She offered him her hand to help him up, but her smile dimmed when he ignored it. She had forgotten about his aversion to touch mudbloods.

"That was fun." she said, forcing her smile to stay in place. "I've never heard you laugh before."

His face immediately shut down and his guarded expression was back.

 _Wrong thing to say._ She thought to herself.

"You cheated." Malfoy's lips twitched upwards and his hair was falling in his eyes. She fought the urge to brush it away.

 _Post-duel jitters._ She told herself.

She shrugged, her heart was still thumping loudly, adrenaline rushed through her veins.

"I never said I fought fair."

"Perhaps you should have been in Slytherin after all, Granger." Her fingers brushed his as he took his wand back from her. They were much colder than hers and she shivered involuntarily.

"Oh and Granger," he called back to her as he left the room, "don't worry about Lavender or whatever her name is, she'll ditch Weaselbee when Gryffindor loses at Quidditch."

"We'll see." she rolled her eyes, even though there was no one in the room left to see.

 **A/N: I hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it :D**

 **Ps: thank you lovinreading for my first review on this story:) you made my day. Seriously.**


	8. Chapter 8- The Slug Club

The minute Hermione arrived, the could tell that the Slug Club party would be terribly boring. Harry looked even more disappointed than she did although she caught a curious expression flit across his face when he looked Ginny.

She grinned to herself, she had never really liked Cho Chang.

Harry and Ginny spent the time talking about Quidditch and Hermione, feeling bored and a little lonely, drifted away to go and mingle.

"Hey." said a soft, low voice, breaking her from her revelry.

She looked up, startled, to see it was Blaise Zabini, one of Draco's circle.

"Hello, Zabini right?"

"You can call me Blaise."he chuckled to himself. His voice was confident, like he was used to conversing with people he didn't know.

He stuck out his hand and Hermione shook it, but was surprised when instead of shaking her hand, he brought it to his lips and kissed it gently.

"That's really weird." Hermione said, laughing so he wouldn't notice the pale blush across her cheeks.

"Weird? I thought it would help me win the heart of a lady as fair as yourself."

Hermione pressed her lips together so she wouldn't laugh again.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Although you are really pretty. I just wanted to talk to you."

"You have something you want to talk to me about?"

"Nope." he popped the 'p'. "I'm just bored. Why don't you pick a topic?"

"What are your views on elfish welfare?" she said automatically.

"Ah yes, I heard about your S.P.E.W." They talked for a while about different topics, Hermione was surprised by the depth of his knowledge. She had thought that he was just a pretty boy with average intelligence.

 _Maybe it is possible for Gryffindors and Slytherins to be friends after all._

Throughout the conversation, she was aware of Blaise flirting with her, even though they hadn't actually talked before that day. He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger absent mindedly. Hermione didn't feel any butterflies in her stomach like she had read about in stories, but she had to admit, she liked the attention.

She remembered Ron saying "Hermione...you're a girl" to her in the fourth year when he needed a date for the Yule Ball. She had been hurt then, Ron didn't think of her as girlfriend or even crush material but he would rely on her to be his back-up date.

 _Well at least, someone finds me attractive._

" Actually, I lied, I do have something to talk to you about. But not here."

Blaise's voice startled her out of her memories.

"What's wrong with here?"

"Too many people. Do you want to dance?"

"Dance? There isn't any music and I'm not sure this is that type of party-"

"I'll take that as a yes." he pulled her by her hand into the middle of the room and twirled her around. They were the only pair dancing and people in the room turned to look at them.

Hermione hated to admit it, but she was having fun being twirled around. She let out a laugh. Blaise didn't seem to have the same aversion to touching mudbloods that other Slytherins she'd encountered seemed to have. She hated it when people did that to her. It made her feel …. dirty.

But at that moment, she was completely at ease.

"Would you be my girlfriend?" Blaise leaned down and touched his lips to her ear so only she could hear what he said.

"Are you joking? We just started talking-"

"Relax Hermione. It would be fake. I just need to make someone jealous." His voice was soothing.

"Pansy Parkinson." Hermione said automatically.

The shock on his face proved that she was right.

"How'd you know? I saw you staring after her when she walked away in detention the other night."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Blaise. I'd love to help, but not that way. Maybe you should ask a different girl."

"Yes, but Weasley would be jealous too..." 

"Why does _everyone_ think that I have a crush on him?" she asked, exasperated.

"Pansy hates you, she'd be furious and from fury, comes jealousy. I don't want to ask any other girl. I know you're smart enough to keep this to yourself and pull it off. Most other girls would gossip about it and ruin the whole , think about what _you_ would gain from this. Weasley doesn't appreciate you enough. Maybe if he saw you with another guy he'd realize how great you are. This could fix both of our problems."

"What about Malfoy?"

Blaise shrugged. "He's my best friend and I love him, but he's using Pansy. And I know you don't think much of her, but I think she deserves better."

 _Too many deals with Slytherins. Not a good idea. First Malfoy and now Blaise. Don't do it. Don't do it._

She thought of Ron and how he never thought of her as more than a friend.

"Yes. I'll be your girlfriend. But...let's keep the kissing to a minimum."

Blaise laughed at that. "Yes ma'am."

"We should probably kiss now though. Half of the room is looking at us. We look so weird dancing without any music. We'd shock everyone if we kissed right now." Blaise whispered in her ear and she could feel his grin.

"Use tongue and I'll hex you. I mean that." she grinned back.

He bent down and kissed her.

It was a chaste peck on the lips but it made the people who were watching them go silent.

 _As long as I'm logical about this, I should be fine._ \- a part of her brain whispered.

 _This is why you shouldn't get crushes on boys. This was a bad bad idea.-_ a larger part of her brain whispered.

She looked around, startled out of her internal debate by the sudden silence in the room. She looked around and saw that half of the room was staring at her and Blaise after the kiss.

She saw Harry's shocked face and her eyes traveled around the room to see Draco's furious face. She hadn't even known that he was in the Slug Club. Pansy wasn't with him. He must have come alone.

At that moment Slughorn announced that it was dinner time and people trailed to the dinner table. Blaise held Hermione's hand and they sat together.

Harry sat on Hermione's other side and Draco sat beside Blaise's side.

"What's going on?" Harry asked uncertainly.

"For once, Potter and I are on the same page." Draco added. He turned to Blaise. "What exactly are you doing, Blaise?"

"Well...Blaise and I have liked each other for a while now, and he just asked me to-"

"Be his girlfriend." he completed and they smiled at each other. Hermione tried to make herself look as love struck as possible.

"Well... that's great." Harry said after a moment of silence, still looking confused more than anything else.

"Oh, really?" Draco asked Blaise quietly. His voice was dangerous and soft.

"Yes." Blaise beamed at Draco and kissed Hermione's cheek and Draco's eyes flashed as Hermione blushed.

 _He probably doesn't approve of one of his gang_ _dating a mudblood._

She forced a smile in Draco's direction and he turned away with an angry expression on his face before getting up and stalking out of the room.

"What's wrong with him?" Hermione whispered to Blaise.

Blaise shrugged indifferently. "Malfoy and his tantrums. He'll get over it soon enough." he turned and struck up a conversation with a Ravenclaw girl who was sitting across from him.

Harry watched Hermione as she stared at the door which Draco had stormed out of.


	9. Chapter 9- Mixed Feelings

Draco slammed his books onto the table, making Hermione jump.

"What was that for?"

He shrugged. "Just do what you're supposed to do and teach me. If I don't pass this class my father will be...displeased. Actually, he'll be furious when he finds out that Dumbledore forced me to take this class in the first place."

"I'm not the one who didn't show up." Hermione replied pleasantly, unwilling to fight with him.

The lesson progressed smoothly although Draco seemed to be in a foul mood.

"Could I talk to you about something?" Hermione asked him, unable to stand the awkward tension between them.

"No." he stated simply.

"O...k." Hermione turned back to the book.

"Are you completely _stupid,_ Granger?" he burst out suddenly.

"What did I do?"

"Blaise is _using you_. Don't you see that?"

 _Yes._ She thought.

"No." she said.

"I didn't take you for stupid, Granger, but apparently you are."

"Or... maybe I'm using him too?" she glared at him. "But thanks for your concern Malfoy."

"What would you use him for? To make the Weasel jealous? He doesn't even deserve you."

"His name is Ron. And who does deserve me then? You?"

Draco looked flustered, "I never said that."

"Mind your own business, Malfoy. I don't comment on your relationship with Parkinson and how you're using her."

"We aren't talking about _me_ right now. You're ignoring the problem."

"And what exactly is the problem? Because I don't see any."

"You are."

Hermione stared at him, her nostrils flaring.

"You want to talk about problems? What about yours? You flinch before touching me, you think you're better than everyone else just because both of your parents have magical blood. And you lied about why you have to take Muggle studies. I know Professor Dumbledore, and he wouldn't put you in muggle Studies just for calling someone a mudblood. You've called me a mudblood countless times. Why don't you start telling the truth before you start pointing fingers at everyone else?"

They were both standing now. Breathing heavily into each other's faces. She noticed for the first time how tall he was compared to her and how she had to tilt her head back a little to look at his face.

To her surprise, he lifted his hand and ran a finger down her cheek and she flinched back involuntarily. His touch made her nervous. His face twisted with a mixture of amusement and another expression that she couldn't place.

"You flinch whenever _I_ touch you, have you noticed that? I'll be able to finish this essay alone, I'll have it done by tomorrow."

The room was silent after he left. Only the sound of Hermione's heavy breathing could be heard. Her ears rang and her skin tingled where he had touched it.

It was raining outside. Casting a quick waterproofing charm on her bag, she went to the courtyard and sat down on one of the stone benches enjoying the feeling as the cold drops of rain hit her skin and made it numb.

"Oi, Hermione, you're getting soaked." It was Ron. Lavender was standing next to him and their hands were intertwined.

"Oh, hey Ron." She pasted a smile onto her lips. "Hey, Lavender."

She didn't hate Lavender. They were actually on good terms with each other. But at that moment, Hermione wanted nothing more than to wrench their hands apart.

"Why are you sitting outside?" Lavender asked her, curious. "It's wet and cold."

"Because it's wet and cold."

"We were on our way to the Great Hall for dinner, you want to join us?" Ron asked her.

"No, I'll head up a little later. Before I forget, I finally drew up the Prefect patrol timings. You should take them now and go over them."

"Not now 'mione, I'll take them later. Lav-lav and I are gonna get some dinner together."

 _Lav-lav? Together?_

Her heart didn't hurt, but something inside her definitely did.

"Ok, have fun."

She buried her face in her hands the second they left.

 _It's just stress, it's just stress._ She chanted in her head.

She really wished she had a pensieve at that moment so she could clear her head of all the mixed feelings that were jumbled together.

She sat there for a while before getting up and heading to the Great Hall. Ron was sitting with Lavender, Harry and Ginny were in deep conversation. A part of her ached with loneliness. She knew Harry and Ron would be there for her whenever she needed them, but she couldn't talk to Ron about her feelings and she didn't want to burden Harry with her problems.

"Hermione" she turned around and heard Blaise call to her. She hesitated for a second, before going to sit at the Slytherin table.

The people around them had fallen silent. But then the whispers began.

"-Potter's best friend is sitting with-"

"-I wonder if she and Potter are still friends-"

"-what the hell is she-"

She smiled at the surrounding people even though she felt queasy from nerves.

Pansy was the first one to speak. "Blaise, what's _she_ doing here?" she hissed at him.

"She's my girlfriend now." he put his arm around her shoulders and smiled at her.

"But she's a mudblood."

"And also the smartest and prettiest girl in our year." Blaise added. "Blood isn't everything."

Hermione smiled back at him gratefully while Malfoy shot daggers at the pair of them.

"You could always go sit somewhere else if you have a really big problem with Hermy being here."

" _Hermy?"_ Draco asked.

"I'll stay." said Pansy, glaring at her.

Conversation at the table was awkward and stilted. Hermione did her best not to meet Draco's eyes even when their feet accidentally touched under the table. She murmured an apology while keeping her gaze fixed on her plate.

"I've got to go." she said when she had had enough of the awkward tension at the table. "I have patrol duty tonight."

"You want me to come with you?" Blaise offered her.

"Nope. Thank you for the offer though." she leaned down and pecked Blaise on the lips. She felt Pansy's eyes on her.

 _Maybe Blaise's plan will work after all._ She mused to herself.

She turned to wave goodbye to Harry and Ron and saw that Ron was looking at her with a bewildered and hurt expression on his face.

Instead of going on her rounds,(she had lied about that; she was lying quite a lot these days ), she headed straight to the kitchens. She hadn't been able to eat properly with so many people staring at her and her stomach was growling.

She tickled the pear and the door to the kitchen swung open. The first thing that Hermione heard was a loud wailing sound. She covered her ears.

"What is _that?"_ she asked the nearest house elf she could see. She recognized the elf, her name was Daisy. She had been coming to the kitchen often recently, whenever she needed to get away from everyone.

"That's Yellow and Freeby, they were released from duty recently, miss." Daisy whispered.

"Who released them?"

"Master Malfoy did. Dobby brought them to Hogwarts, miss."

"Malfoy?" Hermione asked, shocked. She had remembered that those were her terms for the tutoring sessions she had agreed to give to Malfoy, but she realized now, that she had doubted that he would actually follow through with the terms.

"Can I talk to them?"

"Yes Miss. Of course, Miss."

"Hello." Hermione told the wailing house elf in a soft tone. One of them was much older than the other. His skin had taken a yellowish hue. She supposed that he was Yellow. It was this elf who was the source of the horrible wailing.

The other elf, Freeby, seemed to be in shock. She was sitting wrapped up in herself and was staring at the wall without blinking.

"Are you ok?" she asked them gently. At this Yellow's wailing became louder. Freeby didn't respond.

"My father would be so ashamed." Yellow wailed. "We've been serving Malfoy manor for years...until m-me." A fresh wave of sobs ensued.

"But aren't you happy to be away from Malfoy's abuse?"

"Master Malfoy never abused us." Yellow shouted angrily at Hermione.

"But I know one of your old...colleagues."she finished, unsure of how to phrase it. "Harry saw Mr Malfoy hitting Dobby with his waking stick."

"Dobby is a bad elf." Yellow shrieked at her. "He isn't one of us. Master Malfoy never hit us ever. When Freeby burnt through Mr Malfoy's shirt while ironing Master Malfoy replaced the shirt so Freeby wouldn't be punished."

Now that Yellow's angry rant was over, he resumed his wailing.

Seeing that further conversation was useless, Hermione called Daisy back.

"Hey Daisy, do you have any pomegranates?" she asked hopefully. Hermione loved pomegranates and had been taken to them ever since the vacation to India that she had gone on with her parents the previous year.

But even better than eating them, Hermione loved peeling them. It kept her hands busy but the task was easy enough for her to do without putting in too much concentration, which left her mind free to think. As an added benefit she could eat the seeds after she was done with peeling the fruit.

Deseeding the pomegranate took longer than it usually did. Hermione felt even worse than she had after her fight with Malfoy in the evening.

 _Maybe I judged him too harshly?_ A part of her said.

Another part of her argued that Draco had done nothing but give her reasons to hate him ever since their first year. He had taunted her and had been putting her down for being a mudblood for years.

 _He still hasn't given me a proper reason not to hate him._ _The only reason he released his elves from duty was because I made him. He shouldn't keep house elves in the first place, its abuse..even if he saved them from his father's anger sometimes..._

 _He tried to warn you that Blaise is using you..._

 _No_ another part of her argued again. _He showed his temper again. That's all he ever does._

 _He carried you after the Potions incident..._

 _Any decent person would._

She gave up trying to sort out her feelings in frustration.

 _I'll just...give him a fair chance to be a decent person, without judging him for once._

She munched on the pomegranate seeds that she had spent an hour extracting.

 **A/N: If you're still reading this, I want you to know you're awesome. And your smile is pretty ^-^ Constructive criticism is always welcome, as long as you aren't mean about it. -Me**


	10. Chapter 10- Saying Names

It had been a few days since Blaise and Hermione's relationship had been made official. The couple had been irritatingly sappy whenever they got the chance to be. Draco had had enough of Blaise and Hermione and whatever they were playing at.

He refused to believe that Blaise could fall for Hermione. He had known Blaise since they were children and knew for a fact that Blaise's blood prejudice was stronger than his own. Blaise was definitely using her. He had a niggling suspicion that he was trying to make Pansy jealous of Hermione.

Blaise had been harbouring an ill-disguised crush on Pansy for years. He also knew for a fact that Pansy fancied Blaise back. The only reason Pansy was with Draco was because his name had more respect in the pureblood circles than Blaise's. The only reason Draco allowed Pansy to hang around him was because it was amusing to watch Pansy kiss him and try and convince herself that they had any sort of physical attraction whatsoever. Besides, it was amusing to see how it annoyed Blaise and quite frankly Draco liked the attention Pansy gave him.

On the other hand, Draco could not figure out what Hermione was up to. He knew that Hermione's intelligence was at par with his and could not understand why a witch of her calibre would fancy Ronald Weasley.

 _She can't actually be using Blaise to make Weasley jealous, can she? But why Weasley? What does she even see in him?_

But what frustrated Draco the most were his own feelings towards Hermione.

He didn't hate her. He had never _hated_ her. He had been jealous of her at first, when Potter had rejected his overtures of friendship but had accepted hers. She had frustrated him when his marks never exceeded hers and he had been impressed by how Hermione fought during their practise duel.

But lately, he had been noticing things he didn't want to. Like how surprisingly soft her curly hair was when it brushed against his hand, how dedicated she was to the welfare of others (he had seen her getting laughed at for distributing her S.P.E.W badges,) and how she had a small stray freckle at the base of her neck.

He had been sitting on his bed, staring at his feet while he tried to sort out the mess of feelings in his head.

The door slammed open and Blaise stumbled in, laughing. He looked slightly drunk, probably on some firewhisky they had smuggled back into Hogwarts after their last Hogwarts visit. He clutched a bottle of it in his hand.

"What's up, mate?" Blaise asked him, grinning stupidly.

"Nothing." he kept his face expressionless.

"Isn't my girlfriend the hottest ever? Pity about her blood status though." his words were slurred. "Not marriage material as my mum would say. I can think of plenty of other things to do apart from marriage though." He leaned against the door.

Draco's fists were clenched, his bitten fingernails digging into his palm.

"Like...studying together?" Draco asked. He wasn't sure why he was inciting Blaise when he really didn't want to hear Blaise's answer.

"You know what I mean." Blaise winked at Draco again.

It was the wink that did it.

Without thinking, Draco strode forward and punched Blaise's nose, satisfied by the crunching sound he heard when his fist made contact.

The bottle Blaise was holding fell to the floor and shattered as Draco grabbed Blaise's shirt and pushed him against the door.

"Maybe you should learn how to treat girls with some respect." he growled in Blaise's face.

To his surprise, Blaise started laughing.

"You're sweet on the mudblood." Blaise laughed in realization. "I wonder what your daddy dearest will say when he finds out."

Draco let go of Blaise's shirt and stepped back. He was instantly back to his cold self. Showing too many feelings to the wrong person could be dangerous in Slytherin.

"I'm not sweet on anyone. Try telling my father that I am and I'll make you regret it." he smiled as dangerously as he could.

"Is that a threat, Malfoy?"

"No. Its a promise."

"I don't like your promises, Malfoy." Blaise retorted before swinging. Draco hadn't realized that Blaise had been holding one of the shards of the broken bottle.

It sliced the skin of his arm and blood gushed out. Draco didn't even flinch.

 _Never show weakness or pain._ The lesson had been drilled into his head by his mother when he was a child.

He examined the cut. It wasn't too deep but there was a lot of blood, staining his white shirt.

"Touche." Draco said.

"Now we're even." Blaise said, nodding. He was still drunk, but the pain of his broken nose made him more alert.

"We should go to the hospital wing." They nodded and walked there together by some unspoken agreement.

The Slytherins were complex people.

Hermione was tired of sleepless nights and after thinking it through, had finally decided to go and see if Madame Pomphrey could give her a sleeping potion.

She pulled on her slippers and her dressing gown over her pajamas and made her way to the hospital wing as quietly as she could.

When she got to the hospital wing, she was surprised to see two familiar figures occupying two of the beds.

Draco watched her enter the hospital wing and wondered what she was there for. She didn't look injured. He saw the look of recognition cross her face as she saw him and Blaise.

 _Now she'll go straight to her perfect boyfriend._ He thought with a trace of resentment.

To his surprise, she hesitated for a second before heading straight towards where he was sitting up in bed.

"You should see the other guy." Draco said by way of greeting.

A hint of a smile touched Hermione's lips. "I can see the other guy." she said, looking over at the sleeping Blaise in the other bed.

"What happened?"

"We got into a fight." Draco shrugged nonchalantly. He winced a little when his shrug caused the cut to open up again.

"You're a moron, Draco." It was the first time she had ever called him by his name.

"Can I see it?" Draco nodded, still speechless from the fact that Hermione had actually used his name.

She peeled back the band-aid and studied the cut. She touched his skin lightly, but didn't flinch like she normally did when he touched her.

"Should I close that cut for you? I know a spell. It's not perfect though. I could call Madame Pomphrey if you want."

"It doesn't hurt so there's no need." Draco lied smoothly. He was a much better liar than she was.

A tired laugh bubbled from Hermione's mouth. "That's such a lie. Did you know you raise your left eyebrow slightly before lying? Try again, but with the truth."

Draco decided to just tell her the truth. "It does hurt, but I'm used to scars."

"What?"

Draco shrugged again. "Maybe I'll show you some day. Maybe. No need to call Pomphrey. I trust you not to disfigure my arm permanently, Granger."

She waved her wand and cast the same spell she had cast when her finger had gotten cut in potions class. His cut closed itself up and she replaced the bandage on top of it.

Hermione yawned. "Do you want me to stay the night in the hospital wing with you?" she offered him.

"I don't need anything from anyone." he replied, instantly defensive.

"No one said you did. But I could stay if you wanted me to...?"

"You can do whatever you want."

She shrugged and climbed into the bed that was beside Draco's. "Goodnight, Draco" she murmured.

"Hmm." he said back.

 _Second time she's said my name..._

She was asleep in minutes. He stayed awake for a little while longer, looking at how the moonlight made her curls turn silver.

Hermione didn't realize it until the next day but she hadn't needed to use that sleeping potion she had come to the hospital wing for.

 **A/N: Heyo people :) This chapter was actually really difficult for me to write. Also, I like your eyes :D**

 **To, KissMiInk- here's the "More!" you asked for :***


	11. Chapter 11- Almosts and Apologies

The pretense that Hermione and Blaise were together was hard to keep up, at least from Hermione's side. Her schedule was already filled to it's limit with Draco's tutoring sessions (which were going smoothly), prefect patrol timings, and her homework. She didn't have much time or patience for pretending to be Blaise's girlfriend.

To make matters worse, Ron wasn't reacting as she had hoped he would. Instead of being jealous of Blaise and realizing how much Hermione meant to him, he was immersed in his own relationship with Lavender. They were openly dating now and could be found kissing all over the castle. Hermione often took longer detours on the way to her classes, just to avoid seeing them together.

On the few occasions that she and Ron had met, he had acted like she had betrayed him by dating a Slytherin.

On the plus side, Hermione was getting along quite well with Draco. They had been practising their dueling together on the weekends and on weekdays they worked on Draco's muggle studies.

"You want to have a practical class today?" Hermione asked Draco one evening when they were going through Draco's muggle studies homework.

"If it's more interesting than my homework, then sure." he drawled, sounding bored.

Hermione looked excited, her tiredness instantly gone. Draco couldn't stop his lips from twitching into a smile when Hermione bounced across the room to one of the tables on which an assortment of muggle artifacts were kept.

"Do you know what this is?" Hermione held up a pen.

"Some sort of mini fake wand?"

The confused look on Draco's face made Hermione laugh till she was clutching her sides.

"What?" Draco asked. Her laughter was contagious and he ended up grinning along with her. He felt oddly at ease with her, he knew that she, unlike his Slytherin friends would not try and use every emotion he showed against him.

"It's a pen. You use it for writing. Here, try it." she threw it at him and he snatched it out of the air with lightning fast reflexes.

"Ooh, impressive." she sniggered. He rolled his eyes at her and she whacked the back of his head lightly with a book she was holding. Or at least she tried to, he caught her hand before she could and their eyes met for a second before he let go. He didn't miss the involuntary blush that had spread across her cheeks.

"Just try it." she said to break the silence in the room.

"Yes Ma'am." he saluted her and tried it, scribbling his name across a piece of parchment.

"Ok, this is pretty amazing." he said reluctant to admit that muggles might actually be more advanced than wizards. He doodled on the page. "Why don't wizards use these?"

"Because if they were enchanted and passed into muggle hands by accident, they could expose wizards or cause injury to a lot of muggles, They're actually illegal so don't take it out of the room."

Draco was still frowning at the pen.

"I thought muggles were below wizards in every way...at least, that's what I was taught."

Hermione didn't comment. She examined the other things the Room Of Requirement had provided.

"I want to try something but I'm not sure it will work. It depends on how good the Room of Requirement is at providing us with what we need."

"And what exactly do we need?" Draco raised an eyebrow.

"Protection from the magic of Hogwarts."

"What?"

"You'll see." Hermione grabbed a battery, a wire and a small light bulb and gave them to him and took her own. "Here, strip the ends of the wire, like this." She showed him how and he followed her instructions.

" If the Room of Requirement can shield us effectively enough from the Hogwart's wards, then this should work. Normal electricity doesn't work in other parts of the castle though. Connect one end to the battery and the other to the bulb. This is the bulb and this is the battery. " she showed him how.

When they completed the circuit and the bulb lit up, Draco's face filled with glee. "This is bloody amazing." he exclaimed happily. He spent several minutes making the bulb switch on and off.

"Where'd you learn all of this?" he asked happily.

Hermione's smile disappeared a little bit and she looked embarrassed. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously.

"Before Hogwarts...I went to a muggle school. I learnt loads of experiments like this." she kept her eyes trained on the floor as she spoke, clearly expecting an insult from Draco.

"Granger...Hermione," Draco swallowed. He was struggling for words. "I know that I've bullied you for years because your parents are muggles...and I've put you down whenever I could...I'm sorry. I'm not going to change my opinions on muggles, not yet. I can't let go of everything I've been taught that easily. But I'm going to try and be as open minded as possible. And," he swallowed again, "I don't think you're inferior to me anymore."

"Apology accepted." Hermione said after a moments deliberation.

"You want to do some more experiments?" Hermione asked, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.

"Definitely."

She decided to show him how to split white light into multicolours using a prism. For some reason, the Room of Requirement had only provided them with one glass prism. He reached across her to take the prism so he could try when she turned around. Their chests were separated by an inch and his hands were on the table on either side of her.

He was bending slightly so lips were a few centimeters from hers. Hermione felt the blood rushing in her ears.

"Relax Granger, just taking the prism." he said. He bent closer so his lips brushed her cheek as he took the prism from the table behind her.

Hermione's heart thudded loudly in her chest and the butterflies she hadn't felt when Blaise had kissed her, exploded in her stomach.

 _Butterflies? For Draco? But... I'm supposed to get butterflies for Ron. This doesn't make sense._

Her smile was replaced with a confused expression. Draco's expression was nonchalant, like he hadn't nearly kissed Hermione.

"Do you have patrol today?"

"Huh?" Hermione's brain felt foggy. "What?"

"Prefect duties...do you have to patrol tonight?" Draco gave her a knowing smirk, like he knew that her legs were feeling wobbly and her pulse was still racing.

"Y-yes."

"Great. I have patrol too. We could patrol together."

"That sounds...good."

"We can meet in the Eastern tower at 10 then."

"Ok." Hermione's voice sounded higher than normal. She hated that Draco seemed unaffected by how close they had come to kissing.

"Well, let's go then. I have to go do some homework, so tutoring is over for today." Draco gave her a lop-sided smile.

"Erm...I'm supposed to meet up with Blaise."

"Oh. Blaise. Your boyfriend. How could I forget?" his smile turned into a sneer. "Bye." he said before striding off without another word.

Hermione walked in the other direction to where she was supposed to meet with Blaise. She had some things she wanted to talk to him about.

 **A/N: Heyyyy guys. What did you think? Dramione moments make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. I ship them so hard.**

 **If you liked it, let me know. Nothing inspires me to write more than positive feedback. Don't be silent readers. Much love.- Me**

 **Update:19.08.16 Edited for spelling and grammar:)**


	12. Chapter 12- Curses and Confrontations

"I don't want to do this anymore." was the first thing Hermione said to Blaise when she saw him.

"What?"

"This fake relationship, Blaise. I don't want to do it anymore."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No, Blaise I'm serious. I don't have enough time for it honestly. I've got so much on my plate right now. Besides, it's been two weeks since we started this and its had no effect at all, apart from the fact Ron isn't talking to me anymore."

"It might work if you gave it some more time."

"Look, I'm sorry Blaise, but our agreement is over. You'll have to find another way to get Pansy to like you."

A flash of anger crossed Blaise's face. He strode forward, and gripped Hermione's arms painfully.

"No." he hissed. "I just need to find a way to make Pansy leave Draco. Why don't you tell me where you disappear to with Draco every day? Did you think that no one would notice? It's the least you owe me, after backing out of our plan."

The easy-going and charming Blaise that she was used to had disappeared. She looked around, but no one else was in the vicinity. If Blaise hurt her, no one would be around to help her.

The mistake Blaise had made though, was thinking that Hermione needed someone else to help her.

"Let go of me, Zabini." Hermione ordered, her voice hard.

"Not till you tell me where you've been going with Draco every day. Is he cheating on Pansy with a mudblood? She'd definitely leave him if he did that." He shook her roughly.

Hermione's wand was in her hand. She cast a spell that Draco had taught her during one of their many practice duels and Blaise was blown backwards until his back hit the wall, hard. He was held immobile in place.

"Firstly," she said coldly. "You don't get to touch me like that. Or at all. Secondly, I owe you absolutely nothing. Thirdly, if you ever try to touch me again, I _will_ hex your hands off. Don't test me."

She walked away, not bothering to release Blaise from the spell. It would wear out in fifteen minutes anyway.

She didn't think that Blaise was too dangerous, but she didn't want him anywhere near her after he had shaken her so roughly.

She picked up her bag of books from where she had dropped them when Blaise had grabbed her arms.

 _Ok. I've dealt with Blaise. Now I just have to deal with Ron and Draco... as soon as I can figure out what I'm doing with either of them._

She headed straight back to the common room to try and sort out the mess she had gotten herself into.

"Harry!" she called out when she saw a tuft of his messy hair protruding over the back of a sofa.

"Harry, have you seen Ron? I need to talk to him. It's a little urgent."

Harry pulled a disgusted face. "He's with _Lav-lav_ again probably. Making out in some abandoned corner. What do you need him for?"

"I'll tell you later. I've in a little bit of a rush."

"Bye Hermione. Listen, could we talk later when you have the time? We hardly get time to talk anymore."

"Sure. I miss talking to you too." She ruffled his hair before rushing off to find Ron.

"Wait, Harry, could I borrow your Marauder's map please?"

"Sure." he pulled it out and opened it. "It says Ron and Lavender are in the...hospital wing? What?"

"Hospital wing? What for? We should go right now. It might be nothing, but something serious might have happened."

Lavender was lying in a hospital bed when they burst into the room. Her skin was pale and her lips had lost their colour. She could have been dead, if not for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Ron sat at the end of the bed, his eyes were rimmed with red. He'd been crying.

But what surprised Hermione most was the fact that several teachers, including Dumbledore, were standing near the bed. They were murmuring among themselves.

"What's going on?" Harry asked.

"Lavender was cursed." Ron responded, rubbing his face.

"What? By whom?"

"We don't know yet." Ron's voice was hoarse. "Dumbledore says that whoever did it was very skilled at dark magic. They don't even know what she was cursed with. They say they won't be able to work on a counter curse till they know what she was hit with."

"Let's go talk outside." Harry muttered to Hermione and Ron.

The second they were outside the hospital room, Harry spun to face them.

"This has Malfoy written all over it." he whispered, fervently.

"What? Harry, you can't just make accusations like that without any proof." Hermione protested.

"Think about it, Hermione. His dad is a death eater and he's probably one too."

"Half of the Slytherin's have parents who were death eaters. And you have no reason to believe that Draco is a death eater at all."

Hermione felt queasy. After tutoring him and talking to him for so long, she was sure that Draco had had nothing to do with it. She didn't have any evidence, but she was _sure._ And at that moment, all she was thinking about was defending him.

"Draco?" Harry spluttered, she had called him by his first name by accident.

" _Draco?"_ Ron sounded furious. " I knew this would happen." he said angrily. "Ever since you started hanging out with those Slytherins. You're becoming one of call them by their first names now too? This is _your_ fault."

"What?" Hermione's temper was close to snapping.

"Why are you defending them? They're _Slytherins._ "

Her temper snapped.

"You know what's as bad as the blood prejudice some wizards have?" Hermione said hotly. "Your prejudice against and your generalization of the Slytherins, Ronald."

"And Harry, you have no evidence against Draco, yes, I call him Draco now, so stop accusing him just because he's a Slytherin."

"I'm not saying it just because he's a Slytherin-"

"The vendetta that you and Malfoy have against each other is beyond stupid. Remember when you accused him of being the heir of Slytherin without any reason?"

Harry looked a little shame faced at that.

"I'm going. I have patrol now."

"Wait, Hermione. If someone dangerous is in Hogwarts, you shouldn't patrol alone."

Hermione loved that about Harry. No matter how angry they were at each other, he cared for her and her safety and she knew it.

"It's fine, Harry. I'm patrolling with a friend."

"Who?"

"Draco."

"I have nothing more to say then."

Hermione hated fighting with her two best friends, although she often bickered with Ron. But she rarely fought with both of them at the same time. She did her best to hold in her tears as she walked in the other direction and Harry and Ron went back into the hospital room.

 **A/N: Two chapters in a day :D and so, the plot thickens... They'll kiss soon, I promise. Next chapter maybe if you're lucky ;)**

 **Leave me a review if you're loving my story :)**

 **P.s I just discovered Halsey today and now I can't stop listening to her.**

 **Update: 19.08.16 Edited for spelling and grammar :D**


	13. Chapter 13 - Exceeding Expectations

"Hello." Hermione greeted Draco when they met at the base of the Eastern tower for their patrol.

"Hey."

They walked together in silence. Both of them were subdued, each immersed in their own thoughts. Hermione was going over the argument she had had with Ron and Harry over and over in her head.

"What are you thinking about?" Draco finally asked her after ten minutes of companionable silence.

"Lavender was cursed today."

Draco stopped walking and his face paled. "What? What was she cursed with? Did they find out who did it? Did they even find out where it happened?"

Hermione pulled at a lock of her hair, distressed.

"They don't know anything yet. They don't even know what she was cursed with so they can't make a counter curse. Dumbledore says that there were remnants of strong dark magic around Lavender, so whoever did it must be very skilled in the Dark Arts."

They were now walking through an abandoned corridor. It was so far out of the way from the classrooms that students hardly visited this part of the castle.

Hermione tugged at his hand so he started walking again. It felt natural for them to hold hands for a few more seconds as they walked together.

"Do you have any suspects yet?"

Hermione hesitated a while. She wasn't how to tell him that they blamed him.

"Well...they...think it was you." she blurted out. "That's what my fight with Harry and Ron was about, because I defended you."

The tears she had been holding in since her argument with Harry and Ron a few hours earlier finally brimmed over.

"Hermione, are you _crying_?" He looked flustered, like he didn't know what to do with a crying girl.

His reaction made her laugh in spite of her tears. He looked relieved at that.

"Just give me a second." Hermione told him. "I'll get myself under control again." She rubbed the tears away rapidly.

To her surprise he pulled her into a hug in the middle of the abandoned corridor. He smelled of some spice she couldn't place.

"I hold things in all the time." Draco whispered, "you don't need to do that with me. I'm here for you."

Hermione buried her face in his shoulder and allowed herself to cry until the tears dried out. Draco held her the entire time.

When the tears stopped, she pulled back and looked up at him.

"Thanks...I needed that." she smiled up at him. Their faces were an inch apart.

"You...look really pretty when you cry." he murmured.

"I broke up with Blaise." Hermione whispered.

The feeling of longing that Hermione experienced whenever she and Draco were so close to each other was back at full force. She wondered if he felt it too.

 _I really want to ki-_

Suddenly, Draco leaned forward and pressed his mouth against hers. The second their mouths touched, she realized how much she had wanted to kiss him all along. She leaned against him and clutched at his shirt. A part of her mind registered the fact that his shirt was wet from her tears. Draco's hands were around her waist, pulling her closer so that their chests were pressed against each other.

 _I see why Draco has a reputation of being a good kisser._ The thought made Hermione smile against his lips. Draco kissed the corner of her mouth softly and she breathed out shakily and let out a small involuntary moan. Her legs felt wobbly. He kissed her again, this time, more softly than the first kiss.

They leaned their foreheads against each other with their eyes closed, breathing heavily.

When they finally broke apart, Hermione was beaming. Even Draco had a soft smile on his lips that she hadn't seen before.

"I'm rating that kiss at "Exeeds Expectations." Hermione joked happily.

"Ridiculous, I deserve an "Outstanding" for that at the very least." Draco faked being hurt.

She allowed herself to enjoy her bubble of happiness for a few moments before stepping back and trying to wrench her mind back to business.

A thought occurred to her.

"How did Pansy take it?"

"Take what?" Draco looked confused.

"You must have broken up with her...how did she take it?"

"Break up with- I haven't broken up with Pansy."

Hermione's bubble of happiness was gone, like it had never existed.

"You're joking."

"Hermione-" Draco ruffled his hair, distressed. "Its complicated, ok? I can't just break up with Pansy."

"Draco, I really like you. A lot. And kissing you was the happiest I've felt in months. But I can't do that; be the other girl- the girl you string along while you're in a relationship with Parkinson. I deserve more than that."

Every word hurt Hermione, she knew that with every sentence, she was just decreasing her own chances of being happy. But she knew that she had to say it, she didn't want to compromise her own values and worth for anyone- no matter how happy their company or kisses made her.

"Just...give me some time to sort things out."

"Of course, take your time."

They continued patrolling together in silence.

"I'm going to go ask Ron where Lavender got cursed. Do you want to come with me?" Hermione asked him. She didn't want things between them to be awkward.

"No, it's ok, you go ahead. I have to go talk to Pansy about...things." Hermione smiled at Draco reassuringly.

They walked their separate ways. When Hermione was sure that Draco couldn't see her, she touched her tingling lips and smiled to herself.

Ron was still sitting at the end of Lavender's bed with his head buried in his hands. Lavender looked even paler than she had a few hours ago when Hermione had seen her last. It broke Hermione's heart to see Ron in so much pain.

She knew they were still fighting, but she went up to him and placed her hand on her shoulder.

"You alright?" she said,softly.

"Hermione, I'm sorry about what I said before." Ron said when he looked up at her. "What happened to Lavender wasn't your fault at all. We were...arguing about you, that's why she stormed off. If we hadn't been arguing this wouldn't happened."

He buried his face in his hands again. "It's my fault." His voice broke.

Hermione wanted nothing more than to ask why they had been arguing about her, but she knew that it wasn't the right time for that discussion.

"Ron," she sat next to him, "it wasn't your fault. You know it wasn't. We're going to find out who cursed Lavender and we're going to make her better, that's a promise. We've been friends for 6 years...I'm asking you to give Draco a chance before you blame him for this. I really don't think he did this."

Ron smiled at her weakly. "Well, you are the smartest witch I know. If you think Malfoy is innocent...then I'll hold off the judgment till later."

"Where were you arguing?"

"On the seventh floor. But she stormed off in the opposite direction when she got angry. I found her in front of the Room of Requirement when I went back to apologize to her. She was...lying on the floor."

Ron's voice broke off.

"She'll be fine, Ron. I know you really like her. Do you know what time it was when you found her?"

He shrugged. "Around six thirty, I think."

 _Six thirty? That doesn't make sense. Draco and I left the room of Requirement at 6 and we talked in front of the room for a few minutes before we parted and he went to talk to Pansy..._

 _Blaise and I were arguing at that time, And at around a quarter past six I walked past the Room of Requirement on the way back to the Gryffindor common room so whoever cursed Lavender must have done it after then._

 _In that case, it definitely wasn't Blaise. My spell wouldn't have worn out by then._

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows, trying to picture it in her mind.

 _If the person was inside the Room of Requirement...then they must have gotten in after Draco and I left. But if they were outside the Room...I would have passed them. But I didn't pass anyone on the way back._

A sliver of doubt made its way into her mind.

 _What if Draco went back to the Room instead of talking to Pansy...did he even talk to her?What if Harry is right this time?_

 _No. It wasn't him._ She told herself firmly. But the doubt didn't go away. She decided that she should just ask Pansy if she had talked to Draco. Pansy wouldn't lie about that because she loved to show off how much time she spent with Draco.

"I'll talk to you later, Ron." She kissed his forehead.

"Hermione." Ron called out after her and she turned. "You're a really good friend and I love you for it."

Oddly, Hermione felt nothing at the words she had waited to hear from Ron for so long.

 **A/N: Guys, I love you for leaving reviews. I couldn't stop smiling the whole day. So thank you, you wonderful rainbow kittens, you.**

- **Lovinreading thank you for telling me about the punctuation mistakes. I've fixed them:)**

 **P.s If I have any plot holes after I upload the next few chs let me know by private messaging so I can fix them please. And thank youuuuu for reading :D**


	14. Chapter 14- Waking Up

Hermione still had the Marauder's map that she had borrowed from Harry with her. She frowned at it. It said that Pansy was in the girl's bathroom on the seventh floor.

She started off immediately in that direction.

"Parkinson?" she called out in the seemingly empty bathroom.

She and Pansy had been forced to spend more time together when she had been fake-dating Blaise. But in spite of that, their relationship hadn't improved much. Hermione had noticed that Pansy averted her eyes whenever Hermione had kissed Blaise. She figured that Pansy couldn't stand the thought of one of her best friends touching a muggle-born. On the rare occasions that Pansy and she did talk, Hermione caught odd flashes of hate in her expression.

Pansy had always hated Hermione, but ever since Hermione had started to date Blaise, the hatred had seemed to intensify. The insults that she threw Hermione's way when Blaise wasn't looking had grown more vicious and on several instances, Pansy had attempted to cause minor physical harm to Hermione by trying to trip her over on the way to her classes. Hermione had brushed everything off, knowing she could defend herself if Pansy tried anything serious with her.

Needless to say, Hermione wasn't looking forward to questioning Pansy, especially since the seventh floor girl's lavatory was generally abandoned.

She wondered why Pansy had even chosen that bathroom to go to.

"Parkinson?" Hermione tried again, a little louder. She stood there in silence for several seconds. She was just turning to leave when she heard a retching sound coming from one of the bathroom stalls.

"Are you in here?" Hermione tried again.

She knocked on the door of the stall that the retching sound was coming from and the door swung open.

Pansy was kneeling in front of the toilet and was dry heaving into the toilet. She looked terrible. Her face was pale and her normally perfectly coiffed hair stuck to her face as she heaved. She was sweating, even though it was relatively cold in the bathroom.

"Bloody hell, Parkinson. Are you ok?" Hermione asked, shocked.

"I wanted to be alone." Pansy spat between heaves.

"But are you ok? I could get help for you if you wanted."

"Just leave me alone, Granger. Its just nerves." she wailed.

"Nerves for what?"

"It's none of your bloody business."

"Ok, I'll leave." Hermione had no desire to be near Pansy and if she was insisting that she was fine, she wasn't going to force her company on Pansy.

"But, before I go." Pansy groaned when she heard Hermione say this, " I needed to ask you something."

"As long as you go away afterwards."

"Did you talk to Malfoy at around six-twenty today? He said he was going to meet you."

Hermione was careful not to call Malfoy by his first name in front of Pansy. She had already made that mistake once with Harry and Ron and she knew that Pansy's reaction would be no where near as nice as Harry's and Ron's had been if she knew that Hermione and Draco were on first name basis with each other.

Pansy looked confused. "Did he want to talk to me about something? I didn't meet him. I was in the Slytherin common room the entire time."

"Right, thanks."

Hermione's stomach dropped. This meant that Draco had no alibi. It was entirely plausible that he had gone back to the room of Requirement after pretending to go and find Pansy. He could have cursed have been the one to curse Lavender...

 _Shut UP._ Hermione ordered herself.

 _It wasn't him. It can't have been him. I trust him._

 _There was no one else there...I would have seen them if there was..._

 _There's got to be a reasonable explanation for this._

Her head hurt. She was almost at the door when Pansy called out to her.

"I saw him a little while though. He said he wanted to talk to you and me at 2 am in front of the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy on the seventh floor."

Hermione recognized the location.

 _That's where the room of Requirement is._

"Do you know what he wants to talk to us about in the middle of the night?" Pansy asked when Hermione didn't reply.

"No idea."

Hermione hurried away, but in her head, only one thought was present.

 _What if Harry was actually right about this?_

It was nearly one-thirty when Hermione reached the Gryffindor common room. She was exhausted, her day had been a train-wreck. But she wanted to sort this mess out once and for all.

"Harry?" she searched for him as fast as she could.

She exhaled in relief when she found him dozing in one of the comfy sofas in the common room. His Transfiguration homework was scattered on the table in front of him. She shook him as gently as she could.

"Harry! Wake up, this is urgent."

He jolted awake. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Sometimes it worried Hermione that Harry had been through so much trauma in his life that the first thought he had when he woke up was that that someone he loved was hurt.

"No, I'm fine. But listen, this is important. If I'm not back by 2:45 then I need you to come to the room of Requirement . Wear your invisibility cloak when you come though, ok?"

"Ok, but what's going on?"

"I don't have time to explain right now though. Just...come."

Harry looked thoroughly confused and worried.

She rushed off before he could answer.

She reached the Room of Requirement a few minutes before 2 am.

"Malfoy?" she called out. She kept her tone hushed. Students weren't supposed to be out of bed so late; especially not when someone was going around cursing students.

She kept her wand at the ready, but no one else was around.

She rubbed at her eyes tiredly and out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow move.

She whipped around but before she could raise her wand there was a sharp pain in the back of her head when someone hit her with a heavy object.

She crumpled to the floor like a rag doll, crying in pain. The world flickered before her eyes before she blacked out.

She didn't know how long she had been unconscious when she finally came to. Her head felt heavy and her mouth had a metallic taste in it. Blood. Her blood.

She tried lifting her arms but she was held immobile by a spell. She could move her eyes and they trained onto the first thing she saw lying in front of her- the object she had been hit with. It was a glass prism, one corner of the prism was covered in blood.

She recognized that prism. It was the same one she had used when she had showed Draco how to split white light into multicoloured light.

Her eyes stung and she felt her eyes start to water. A single tear rolled down her cheek, tickling her uncomfortably as it did so.

She lay there, humiliated, unable to wipe away her tears, check the extent of the damage done to her head or even reach for her wand.

She looked up. A figure was standing in front of her. The corridor was dark, the only source of light was from the figure's wand which was held away from its face, so she couldn't identify who it was.

"They should be here soon." The figure rolled up his left sleeve. A dark mark was imprinted onto pale white skin.

She knew that voice. She'd recognize it anywhere.

"What's the matter, mudblood?" The figure spat. "Don't they teach you how to differentiate your friends from your enemies in muggle school?"

He laughed cruelly and raised his wand closer to his face so she could she it.

Draco Malfoy.

 **A/N: Yaaaaaaay Cliffhanger. I feel so evil. Heh heh.**

 **Please don't hate me. XD I'd love to hear your theories about what's happening though.**

 **Also, Two chapters in a day again! I'm on a roll (mostly coz I'm in a really good mood) :D**


	15. Chapter 15 - Dueling Death eaters

After Draco's kiss with Hermione, several things became clear to him. Firstly, he really liked Hermione. Secondly, he needed to break up with Pansy as quickly and cleanly as possible and thirdly, he had no idea how to find Pansy.

He had searched for her in the evening after parting ways with Hermione at the Room of Requirement but he hadn't been able to find her. He'd checked in the Slytherin common room and the northern tower where Pansy sometimes used to go when she wanted to avoid everyone, or when she had a fight with Draco.

He gave up looking for her and sat in the Slytherin common room waiting for her to come back. He returned to the Slytherin common room after his patrol to check if she had returned from where ever she had been hiding.

Instead of Pansy, he found a note on his bed, written in her handwriting.

 _Meet me in front of the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy on the seventh floor at 2am._ \- the note read.

He flipped it over, looking for some sort of explanation on the back, but there was none. He made up his mind to go and meet Pansy, he wanted to get the break up over with.

The corridors were dark, the only light coming from his wand and the grumbling of the nearby portraits who were annoyed at being woken from their sleep. The corridor in front of the room of Requirement was dark too.

 _Lumos-_ he whispered, relighting his wand. He had turned off the light so that he didn't disturb too many portraits.

It took all his years of practice of hiding his emotions not to react to what he saw. Hermione was lying on the floor, a drop of blood was rolling down her forehead and there seemed to be blood in her hair.

The prism that he had last seen in the Room of Requirement was lying on the floor in front of her, a corner was covered with crusted blood.

"I bet you're upset that your mudblood girlfriend is going to die." Pansy stepped into the light, smiling. She looked slightly unhinged.

Draco kept his expression completely blank.

"No, you did me a favour. Although, I was going to kill her myself after she stopped being useful."

He nudged Hermione's body with his foot, pasting a disgusted expression on his face even though internally, he was panicking.

 _Why isn't she moving? How hard did Pansy hit her?_

"What do you mean you were going to kill her? I saw you cheating on me. I saw you meeting up with her every day at the Room of Requirement. I followed you." Pansy's voice sounded nearly hysterical.

"Obviously I was using her, Pansy." He had no idea what he was saying, the only thing he knew was that Hermione needed to get medical attention, and fast. The trickle of blood from her forehead was slowly turning into a small puddle beneath her head.

"Since when do I associate with mudbloods? You're so stupid, Pansy. You've completely ruined my plan. And you've made a mess by cursing Lavender."

Pansy smiled.

"I didn't curse her, although I wish I had. I never liked her. She made fun of my hair once. Goyle did that."

"Do you think I'm stupid,Pansy? I know Goyle. And he isn't strong enough or smart enough to cast a curse with so much dark magic."

"No, not Gregory. I'm talking about his father. I sent a message to your father today. I told him that if he wanted Potter's best friend, all he had to do was send deatheaters to Hogwarts at 2 am. I lured her here." Pansy giggled. "They're coming to kill Hermione, like I promised them." Pansy's smile was incandescent. But it this situation, it was just creepy.

"Deatheaters can't enter Hogwarts."

 _What has she done?_

Pansy looked immensely pleased with herself when Draco said this, like she had been waiting for him to say it the entire time.

"I went to the Room you used after you left. I saw the little etelectricity experiments you did with the mudblood. And I remembered what you told me about Hogwarts from that horrible book you're always quoting- A History of Magic. You told me that etelectritity wouldn't work in Hogwarts because the saturation of magic interfered with it. But the Room of Requirement provided enough protection for it to work inside it. So I thought, what if I just asked it for protection from the anti-apparation wards Hogwarts has. It worked." She laughed happily.

"Don't you see Draco, I always paid attention to everything you said, even the boring things. I was such a good girlfriend. HERMIONE DOESN'T GET TO KEEP BOTH YOU AND BLAISE. IT ISN'T FAIR." she shouted.

"For gods sake, shut up Pansy, or Filch will come running. And I told you I was using her for information about Potter. What am I supposed to tell the dark lord now? You've ruined everything."

Pansy's face paled.

"I don't believe you were using her. I saw you talking to her like-like you cared about her."

"Its called _acting._ " Draco tried to fuel as much anger into his words as possible. " She was supposed to trust me. When else have I ever been nice to mudbloods?"

He could see Pansy start to believe him.

"What time are the deatheaters supposed to be here?" It was nearly 2:30.

"Around 2:30." Pansy's face showed some doubt now, she was wondering if she had done the right thing by unknowingly interfering in Draco's plan.

To Draco's relief, Hermione's eyes flickered open. Tears rolled down her cheek. This alarmed him more than the pool of blood surrounding her head.

 _How much pain is she in?_

"They should be here soon." Draco said, rolling up his left sleeve and exposing the dark mark he had been forced to take on months ago.

"What's the matter mudblood?" he spat, as venomously as he could.

 _Why can't she speak? Please tell me she isn't paralyzed by the blow to the head._

"Don't they teach you how to differentiate your friends from your enemies in muggle school?"

Still no reply from Hermione.

"Pansy, if you've paralyzed her, the dark lord will kill you...she's no use to him paralyzed." _Or I'll kill you, if he doesn't._

"What? No, it's just a binding charm. I was waiting for the deatheaters to come and kill her so her death isn't traced back to me."

"Are you daft? You've already cursed Lavender."

"No, I told you, Goyle did that. I told him not to leave the Room of Requirement but he wouldn't listen. That stupid Lavender saw him, so he cursed her. She won't be waking up any time soon." she smiled smugly.

"Unbind Granger" he ordered her.

"What?"

"Did I stutter?"

She obeyed his orders mutely.

"Can you walk?" Draco helped Hermione up. He pasted a disgusted look on his face like he used to wear whenever he touched a mudblood.

Hermione nodded. She wouldn't meet his eyes. But he knew that if she did look at him, her expression would be one of betrayal.

He needed to send her a message that he was acting. But how? He drew up a blank. He didn't do well under pressure.

He had picked up her wand from the floor, he pressed it at discreetly as possible into Hermione's hand, blocking Pansy's view with his body. He looked at her urgently, praying that she would understand and just go along with Draco's acting.

"So I guess the rumours are true then." Draco had not even heard the death eaters arrive. There were three of them. They stood silently against the wall in their black robes, their faces covered with masks.

He turned to face them, hiding his building panic.

 _The death eaters are here. Brilliant. What do I do now?_

"Good to see you too, Avery. What's true?" he asked coldly.

"That you have feelings for mudblood. How the mighty have fallen." he smirked at Draco.

Draco leveled his wand at Avery's face. "Careful what you say, Avery. The dark lord wouldn't be happy if he ended up accidentally...losing one of his followers."

Avery looked at him silently for a few moments. "Prove it. Kill her." He sneered at Draco, sure that Draco would refuse.

"Ok." Draco said.

Inside, Draco was shouting.

 _WHAT DO I DO? I NEED TO STALL. WHERE'S FILCH? WHY ISN'T HE HERE YET?_

A thought crossed his head. Hermione could duel him better than anyone else could. After their multiple dueling sessions, Hermione knew his stances and the changes in his breathing patterns by heart. She knew when he was going to strike and where he was aiming.

"Fine. But then no one else will touch her."

He looked over at Hermione. Her legs were shaking and she was swaying on her feet. He hoped that she was upto dueling with him. It was their only chance at stalling before the death eaters took matters into their own hands and killed her.

Draco tried casting the non-verbal disarming spell, praying that it wouldn't work.

To his relief, Hermione countered it with a flick of her wand.

"Why don't you just kill her? Too weak?" Avery mocked Draco.

"No. I'm just not as stupid as you are. She's of no use to the dark lord dead."

At that moment , Hermione aimed a " _Stupefy!"_ at him. He dodged it easily. Their show needed to be convincing enough to stop the death eaters from interfering.

He forced a laugh as her spell missed him.

Hermione looked terrible, but her face was set. She'd caught onto Draco's plan and she was determined to pull it off.

He fired spell after spell at her, making sure he emphasized his body cues so she knew which spell he would do and when. She was able to counter him perfectly. He felt a twinge of pride that they were so in sync with each other but it was dampened by worry, Hermione looked like she was going to pass out any second.

That's when it happened. Hermione swayed on her feet and was too slow to react. Draco's spell hit her and she crashed backwards onto the floor, knocking down Pansy too.

"Good going, although I thought you'd hit her faster." Goyle, another one of the death eaters who had accompanied Avery, commented.

Avery stepped forward to drag Hermione back to the Room of Requirement, probably so he could apparate them back to where Voldemort was waiting.

That was the moment that Draco chose to strike.

 _They can take her over my dead body._

He stupefied Avery and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. Pansy, who had been trying to get up, was the next to be stupefied.

The other two death eaters, Goyle and another he didn't recognize turned towards him. As good as his dueling skills were, he doubted that he could take two of them at once.

Suddenly, Harry appeared, seemingly from thin air. He immediately engaged the other death eater in a duel.

Draco turned to Goyle.

"You're the one who cursed, Lavender." he stated. "They blamed me for that. I _hate_ being blamed for something I didn't do."

He fired hex after hex at Goyle, hardly stopping to breathe as he dueled. The sweat poured down his face. Goyle was better at dueling than his son was and hitting him with a spell was proving difficult. Draco wasn't sure how long he could keep it up, his arm was tiring.

Suddenly Goyle crumpled of his own accord. Harry had hit him from behind, he leveled his wand at Draco.

"Relax, Potter. I'm on your side." he held his hands up as a sign of peace.

"I need to take Hermione to the hospital _now._ Bind the rest of the death eaters. Make sure you take Goyle's wand, they'll need it to break whatever curse was placed on Lavender."

Harry nodded. "I'll alert Dumbledore."

Draco looked down at the unconscious Hermione he was carrying. He hoped she hadn't lost too much blood.

 **A/N: The end is nigh... only one or two chapters to go, guys. Did you actually think that Draco might be evil? But it's a Dramione fanfic though... XD**

 **Hope you liked it :)**


	16. Chapter 16 - Endings and Beginnings

Hermione woke up feeling groggy and disoriented. She recognized the hospital immediately, she'd been spending a lot of time in there that year.

Harry was sitting in a chair beside Hermione's bed. He was sleeping, but he woke up immediately when Hermione shifted to reach for the glass of water that was kept beside her bed.

"How long have I been here?" she asked, fretting about the number of classes she'd missed and the amount of work she'd have to do to catch up.

"Hello to you too." Harry grinned, relieved that she'd woken up after being unconscious for so long. "Five days. Don;t worry though, I've taken notes for you and brought you your homework assignments."

"You're the best, Harry."

He patted her hand. "You scared us, you know. The head wound was pretty bad. I don't know how you managed to walk when you'd lost so much blood, let alone duel Malfoy."

"It wasn't an actual duel, Harry. We've been practising recently. I was going to tell you... I was worried about your reaction."

Harry shifted in his seat,looking uncomfortable. "I already knew that you were meeting up everyday. I saw you two on the Marauder's map a few times. That's what I was going to talk to about when I said I wanted to talk in the Gryffindor common room. I figured you must have your own reasons for not telling me."

"I was tutoring him...for muggle studies. I really like him, Harry. Speaking of Draco, do you know where he is?"

As if on cue, Draco entered the hospital wing. He looked uncomfortable that he was interrupting a private moment. Harry nodded at Draco and patted Hermione's hand and whispered, "I'll see you later."

She smiled at him as he left.

"Hey." Draco whispered, unsure of what to say.

In response, Hermione grabbed his arm and tugged up his left sleeve. The dark mark shone against his pale skin.

"Where'd you get this?" She ran her fingers up and down his mark.

"I was going to tell you about it... I just didn't know when the right time was."

"You'll be in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out, Draco. What are you going to do?"

"Dumbledore already knows."

Hermione was shocked into silence. "What?"

"That's why he forced me to take Muggle Studies. He thought that if I understood muggles, I might not hate them so much. It was a terrible idea." He chuckled softly. "I don't think the class would have had any effect at all if I hadn't gotten to know you."

"Are you going to be in trouble? What's happened to Pansy? Where's Lavender?" She looked around, noticing for the first time that the bed Lavender was in was empty.

"Pansy's been taken to St Mungo's for psychiatric evaluation. Dumbledore insisted, even though the Ministry wanted to lock her straight up. Lavender is fine. We got Goyle's wand which was used to cast the curse so they managed to undo it. Are you sure you feel fine? You look a little flushed..."

"I'm fine, Draco."

"Weasley is waiting outside to talk to you. He won't come in while I'm here. He definitely still hates me. Although Potter is being...decent since I saved your life." He smiled smugly to himself. "I'll see you later Hermione."

"I need to talk to you." was the first thing Ron said to her when he entered the room.

"I'm not exactly running away, am I? I don't think I can run at all actually." She grinned.

"When you promised you'd find the person who cursed Lavender, I didn't know you'd fight death eaters to do it."

"Well, to be fair, I just lay unconscious on the ground while Harry and Draco did most of the fighting."

"You know what I mean, Hermione. But that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about actually. I know you like me Hermione... in a more than friends way and I-" he looked awkward, like he was wishing he was anywhere else but there.

"Wait." Hermione cut across him. "You don't have to worry about that, I'm over it. I'm sorry if I made you feel awkward in any way. Friends?" she stuck out her hand for him to shake.

"Best friends." he kissed her forehead.

"You'll be able to leave tomorrow. I asked Madame Pomphrey for you."

"Listen, Ron, before you go, could you do me a favour?"

"Anything."

"Could you be civil to Draco? He saved my life... It would mean a lot to me if you did."

"Well, I can try... I'll see you later 'mione."

When Madame Pomphrey grudgingly let Hermione leave the next day, she was surprised to see that Draco was leaning up against the wall outside the door, waiting for her.

"Where are Ron and Harry?"

"I asked them if I could escort you to the Great Hall for Dinner instead." He ruffled his hair, looking a little shy.

He held out his arm to her. "My lady, will you please take my arm." He did a mock bow and she laughed, curtsying.

"Why, of course, my lord."

When they reached the Great Hall, Hermione was shocked by the silence. No one was eating anything, hardly anyone was moving.

"What's happening?" she asked, confused.

"Hermione Granger," Draco announced in a loud voice, "You're the smartest and kindest witch I know. Would you do me the honour of being my girlfriend?"

"What?" Hermione looked around at the sea of silent faces who were staring expectantly at her. TO her mortification, even the teachers were present.

"This is really embarrassing, but yes, I will be."

When he leaned down to kiss her, Harry was the first person who stood up to clap.

"I could have said 'no' you moron, how embarrassing would it have been for you then?" she whispered in Draco's ear.

"Horribly embarrassing, but I knew you wouldn't." he grinned at her.

"Now can we _please_ go eat, I'm starving?"

"Yep." he tried to tug her towards the Slytherin table.

"No way, Draco. I've been sitting at your table for a while, now," she smiled at him evilly, " its your turn to sit at mine."

The look of terror on his face as Hermione pulled him to the Gryffindor table _definitely_ made up for him embarassing her in front of all her friends and teachers.

 **A/N: THE END! yay! The first fanfic I've ever completed writing. I honestly thought it would take longer than 11 days to write.**

 **Leave me a review if you liked it:) And THANK YOU FOR READING :* have a great day. - Me**

 **You can check out my newest story "Dealing with Changes" which is about what happens when Hermione's, Pansy's, Neville's and Blaise's houses are changed for a year. It's Dramione, Luneville, Pansy/Ron and Harry/Ginny :D**


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